Here’s something I created that those of you into genealogy or just nostalgia will very likely find enjoyable. It’s 100% free, and definitely good for the whole family. It is a web site where you enter your (or someone else’s) birthdate; it will then generate a custom timeline in the form of “When you were age so-and-so, the following event(s) happened.” You can add several custom events to the timeline too, if you like.

Although that does describe it in a nutshell, the description alone really doesn’t do it justice; take a moment to check it out. No pop-ups, no information collecting or data-mining, no flash, no cookies or technological trickery of any kind. Just an enjoyable way to look at historical events.

All you have to do is go to the ourtimelines.com web site and click on the second button down in the left hand column. From there, you’ll be taken to the current timeline generation page (it moves around, so only bookmark the home page), you enter the date or dates (it’ll take an end date too, very useful for your ancestors), and bingo, you have a timeline.

If you go there armed with the birthdates of a decent subset of your forebears, I can just about guarantee you’ll have a great time. The idea is to provide a useful and educational perspective on ourselves and those who came before us — I think you’ll find that it works very well. If you’re doing genealogical research on your family, I bet you’ll be adding a new tool to your bookmark list.

Tags: america, american, ancestor, colonial, events, family, father, forebear, free, fyngyrz, genealogical, genealogy, grand, grandfather, grandmother, great, historical, History, meta, Meta-Fyngyrz, middle ages, mother, past, present, time, timeline, timelines, us, usa, visualization