HistoryWorld is an interactive online history encyclopaedia that seeks to make world history more easily accessible through interactive narratives and timelines.[1] It was established by Bamber Gascoigne[2][3][4] who started developing it in 1994.[5][6] It went online in June 2001[7][8][9] and in 2002 it won the New Statesman New Media award for the best educational website.[5][6] In 2007 Gascoigne launched a related site, at TimeSearch Archived 15 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, using timelines as a way of searching the internet.[9]
HistoryWorld currently consists of about 300 narratives and some 10,000 events on searchable timelines.[1] All the content (apart from "The Wellcome History of Medicine", by Dr Carole Reeves)[10] has been written by Gascoigne.[11]
The HistoryWorld website, which is free to use, also contains more than 5000 entries from Gascoigne's Encyclopedia of Britain, originally published by Macmillan in 1993,[12] and a pilot project, Places in History for Richmond-upon-Thames, which uses placemarks in Google Maps to identify the exact position of a building, street or other feature, with a satellite view of the location. The maps then link to pages in HistoryWorld for historical details, images and timelines.[13]
Harvey McGavin, writing in the TES, said that the history website "is remarkably easy to navigate" and "should help teachers and pupils find all the answers".[8]