History deserves receipts.
The internet is filling up with machine-written history that reads smoothly and cites nothing. SourcedStory runs the other direction. Every event on every timeline carries its sources, and the quality of those sources is graded in the open.
How trust works here
Trust here starts with one event and the sources attached to it. Every source is graded against a registry of archives, journals, and institutions that we maintain by hand, and each event wears the grade of its strongest source. At the top of a timeline you can see what share of its events rest on high-quality evidence.
If an event has no sources, it gets flagged where everyone can see it. Drafts stay private until the author decides to publish, so readers only ever see work someone chose to put their name on.
How we actually build this
The order never changes. We find sources first and check them: is this credible, does the link still work, does the page actually say what we’re about to claim? Only then does the event get written, and it sticks to what those sources support. A person reads and approves every event before it goes live.
Find, check, write, review. That’s the whole method.
When historians disagree, we say so
Sourced doesn’t mean settled. A lot of real history is disputed or only half-documented, and a site that hid all of that would be lying by omission. Debated and speculative events stay in the record here. They just get labeled. Every event carries a confidence level (well-documented, debated, or estimated) next to its sources, so you can see how solid the ground is before you build on it.
The five tiers
- 1 · Primary sourceOriginal documents and artifacts: national archives, treaty texts, museum collection records, first-hand publications.
- 2 · Peer-reviewedPeer-reviewed journals and academic publishers: Nature, PNAS, university presses, indexed research.
- 3 · Reputable sourceInstitutions with editorial accountability: NASA, the WHO, national museums and libraries, .edu and .gov sources.
- 4 · General sourceNamed books, news organizations, and encyclopedic references. Solid, but a step removed from the original evidence.
- 5 · Unclassified sourcePersonal sites and unrecognized domains. Allowed, but labeled honestly so you can judge for yourself.
Every cited link also gets an automatic check when an event is readied for publish: does the page still load, and does it plausibly back up the claim? That check has limits. Some perfectly good sources block automated tools, so those are left out of the link-verified figure rather than counted against it, and a person still reads everything before it ships. Spot something wrong? Every event page has a suggest-a-correction tool, and once the author reviews it the outcome is logged in that timeline’s public correction history. You can also reach us directly.
Built independently
SourcedStory is built and funded independently by Aaron Christ. One person researches, checks, and approves everything published under the SourcedStory name, which is why the library grows slowly and why every event can name the exact source behind it. A trust product should not be anonymous, so it isn’t.
There are no ads and no engagement algorithms; the site earns its keep through optional paid plans for creators. That keeps the incentive simple: be worth trusting.
See it in practice
Open any event on any timeline. The evidence is right there.