What exactly is The Yesterday Times?
Pick any day in history, such as a birthday, a wedding day, or the day you met, and we typeset a full newspaper front page from the real events of that date: headlines, articles, photos, even the vintage advertisements. Read it online, download it, or share it.
Is it real news?
The events are real history, but the articles are composed as a novelty keepsake. Pages are fictional recreations rather than archival reproductions, and they may contain inaccuracies. They are not affiliated with any real newspaper.
Can I edit the paper?
Archive editions are read-only once they are typeset. Create from Scratch editions, and duplicated copies you make from your library, can be edited: copy, photos, fonts, themes, and page grids.
Do I need an account?
No. You can pick a date and read the edition without signing in. An account is what lets you save editions to a library, come back to them later, share them, and edit the ones that are editable.
Is there an edition for every day of the year?
Yes. We keep a finished edition for all 366 days of the calendar, and you can read any of them from the On This Day archive without typing a date.
What are the puzzles?
Most editions carry one. Depending on the layout you may get a crossword, a cryptoquote, a word search, or trivia questions drawn from the same day in history.
Can I download or share an edition?
You can download a page as a PNG image or a PDF, and you can share a link that lets someone else read the same edition without an account.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. On a small screen an edition opens in a stacked reading view, and you can switch to the full page layout whenever you want to see it as it would print.
How accurate is an edition?
The events, dates and photographs are checked before anything is written, and the writer works only from that record. The prose around those facts is generated, so it can still get a detail wrong. Our About page sets out what we check and how.
I found a mistake. What should I do?
Tell us. Send the edition date and what is wrong to support@theyesterdaytimes.com, or use the contact form, and we will correct the page.
Where do the photographs come from?
Archive photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, and the rest are stock photographs from Pexels. Every picture is credited on the edition it appears in, and a story runs without a photograph rather than with one we cannot tie to the event.
Something went wrong with my edition.
Email support@theyesterdaytimes.com and we will help.
Do you send anything by email?
Only if you ask. You can subscribe to a daily note with a slice of history from that date, and every one of those emails carries an unsubscribe link.