I got a review copy of this from the publisher through NetGalley and though it works as a one-a-day sort of read, that wasn't going to work, so... jamb a year's reading into a month (while also having surgery to take me out of it for a while) and ... fun book.

I thought initially of giving this 4 of 5 stars but the story of November 12, 1970 and Oregon blowing up a whale carcass had me laughing out loud. That and his, ummm, .... colorful language throughout. I am not familiar with the FB page that this came from, and if you reading these thoughts this aren't, it's Uncle John's Bathroom Books for adults, Daily Affirmation version (or Uncle Cecil's Straight Dope History version if you're old enough .) Right in the Author's Note, Mr. Fell says:
I can’t believe I have to say this, but Nazis are bad. Bad before World War II. Bad during. Still bad now. The worst kind of bad. There are no “very fine people” among them. If you disagree, you won’t like this book.

Well, I like this guy before I even start! (On Robert the Bruce: How do you get “the” included between your first and last name? “James the Fell” has a cool ring to it. It makes my name no longer a complete sentence.)

And...
"P.S. You’ll notice no shortage of Trump hate in this book. Fuck that guy.
June 14, 1946, was a dark day in history indeed.
June 17, 1972 Don’t get me wrong. Nixon was a piece of shit. But comparatively speaking, the Trump bar was so low it must have had some bizarrely powerful magnetic attraction to Earth’s molten core.
September 14, 1901 You may have noticed that there is no shortage of criticism of a certain semi-sentient dayglo taint stain of a president in this book"

So... language... if "cussing", "cursing", "swearing" or whatever (not liking Fanta Menace or Nazis) offends you, you also won't like this book. I like this stuff, so I knew a lot of this already, if not down to the details, and I learned a few things. And Fell has a way with the written word. Go Canada!

A few I highlighted:
Jan 2, 1492 They say no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but they kinda telegraphed that shit.
{Hah!}

February 11, 1812 Elbridge Gerry, who was such a dick he pronounced his last name with a hard G, like Gary instead of Jerry.
{Huh. Did not know that}

Feb 17,1974
The Secret Service, who must have trained at the Star Wars Stormtrooper Academy of How to Shoot Good, fired about three hundred rounds and he [Private Robert Preston, in a stolen UH-1] was hit five more times, but they were all minor injuries.
{Hah again!}

February 20, 1933 If you allow capitalism to run amok, it will; money has no conscience. [...] my point is that money often gets people to not give a fuck about morality.
{Yep}

Feb 23, 1445 Except, Gutenberg wasn’t actually first. A form of movable-type printing press was first created in Korea two centuries earlier by Choe Yun-ui, but for a number of reasons the invention didn’t catch on in Asia.
{Having lived in Korea for seven years, and learned much about their history, I knew this.}

April 18, 1521 Over the next five hundred years, some [Protestants] became chill and started ordaining gays, and others did fucked-up shit like playing with snakes and getting Trump elected.


April 30, 1905 "And FYI, before you share a meme with a “quote” by Einstein, google that shit first. He is one of the most popular figures to whom quotes are misattributed."
{Yes! Always check on quote sources, ... from anyone.}

May 17, 1954 Since most people only know about the first two amendments because of the endless shrieking about them on social media, I’ll elaborate. [The Fourteenth Amendment]

July 4, 362 B.C.E. Most of humanity’s governments have been oligarchies, where a minority rule via birthright (aristocracy), religion (theocracy), or wealth (democracy). Look at the United States and tell me that last one isn’t true.

July 29, 1974 {Great story about Geddy Lee's 21st birthday, and Neil Peart joining THE band.}

August 1 (my birthday!) 1980 Video didn’t kill [Christopher] Cross’s radio star, sucking did.
{Yes!}

September 25, 1981 Reagan, despite the deification of him by many on the right, was not a good president.

A sometimes serious look at what happened on this given day in history. Sometimes humorous and mostly accurate, the author did a good job of trying to balance new and ancient history. I loved some of the stories that I had never heard before.
The downside, was the snark sometimes got old, but over all a great little history companion.

On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down was not what I was expecting. I was hoping a fun and exciting book to read but yet it was not.

On This Day in History Sh!T Went Down
By James Fell
This book is hilarious most of the time, informative and brilliant all the time! I wish my history classes had been taught like this. I might have paid more attention!
Each day of the year from January 1st to December 31st, a bit of history from that particular day somewhere in the past is explained. It's explained in everyday language with adjectives that would not be welcome in most classrooms. I think the author did a marvelous job of adding them just where they were needed to add the humor and wit to the story! I giggled a lot throughout the book. I am not saying this book only covers humorous events, far from it. Some were very sad and horrible. Regardless, I enjoyed the stories and the writing!
I did learn some things as I read too and that is also a big bonus! I definitely would recommend this book!
I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this entertaining book!

I’ve never heard of James Fell. I understand that he rose to some level of fame during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when his daily history posts on social media went viral. If you’re like me and somehow missed that phenomenon, then you’re in luck because this book is a re-capture of those posts. Actually, this book is a mainstream publication of his self-published book from a couple of years ago, updated for anything that may have changed since that first publication.

Essentially, this book provides little tidbits of interesting history, each covering just a couple of pages. It is divided into months and then days of the month. So, the first entry is about something that happened on January 1st, the second is from January 2nd, and so forth. But each entry can be from any year in history – whenever that covered event took place. The items of history are mostly well-known but occasionally there was a tidbit that was new to me. Many are from large historical events like WW2 but others are from little-known events or are from other topics like the world of entertainment, scientific inventions, riots, etc. etc.

The schtick here, as is well publicized, is the extraordinary amount of cusswords sprinkled throughout. This is used almost entirely for humor, and many readers will likely get a kick out of it. If you are one to avoid any swearing in whatever you read, then this book is probably not for you.

The author is not exactly neutral in his reporting of these historical incidents. He is clearly on the political left and takes great delight in skewering anything pro-Trump or Trump supporters. I have no problem with that. Nazis are a favorite target too. Christians, especially those involved in attempts to convert native populations are another group that receives both barrels of his word barrage.

The main problem I had with the book is not the swearing but rather the author's take on historical events. The afterward includes the fact that the author has a Masters degree in history but he chose not to pursue a PhD. He is a history enthusiast. He is not a professor of history nor does he have any credentials in teaching. That became clear to me early on based on his presentation. Not only is he extremely biased in his views, he presents his "facts" from today's perspective with no regard for the era or the culture in which it occurred. For example on numerous occasions he refers to "that f'n traitor Robert E. Lee" (a term he uses for every single person on the Southern side during the Civil War). Nowhere does he offer any other perspective. In those days the state was much more important in the eyes of citizens than the country and Lee chose to not be a traitor to his home state of Virginia. But there is no allowance for such things in this author's view. The author does this all the time. There is zero attempt to provide any understanding of the era or the circumstances in which the event took place.

The author is Canadian. OK. He is certainly not shy about sharing his feelings about the USA, with approximately 99% of the US-relevant entries (which is most of them) being negative, and subject to many choice adjectives. To be fair he does provide one negative entry relevant to Canada. That certainly seems balanced to me.

I read this entire book over several days, mainly so I could do this review at the request of the publisher. I don’t recommend that for most readers. A little bit at a time would seem the better option. Better yet, if you're still determined to read this book, start reading it on January 1st of next year and just read one entry each day throughout the year. That way you won’t be overcome by the “too much all at once” syndrome.

Bottom line: If you don’t mind lots of swearing in your reading material, (meant to be humorous) this can be a great way to absorb some cool factoids from history. Just be aware that the author is not exactly unbiased in his approach to what he decides to write about, or what slant to give it.

Not my normal read, but so glad I did read it. I learned a lot of fascinating history from the author and the people in the book are rally interestingly portrayed.

This was such a fun read. It would be nice to read these as a daily way of learning something new. History can be really dry and I love that this wasn’t. It was funny but still provided the information on what happened in history.

I loved the concept of this book, and would make a great daily read. I'm imagining the content written on a daily calendar, and I'd be intrigued to read a passage a day.

I loved the broad range of historical events and time periods represented. Most of the events were ones I had never heard of, and I'm a history nerd. A few made me start to research further because they were so interesting. This was a perfect bite- sized history books for people who don't generally read history books.

I enjoy a casual approach to history retelling but this was a little too casual. It felt more like an edgy teens blog than a published book. It got a little cringey at times, and seemed like the author added in curse words and snarky commentary just to be cool, and that didn't work for me. Because of that I do not think I'd reccomend this to adults.

Back in 2020, James Fell crated Facebook posts that provided events that happened on particular days. This title is a printed version of those post. Some of the posts are of positive events (28 October 1956 - Elvis gets vaccinated on TV - multiple teenagers follow suit), some are weird (3 May 1978 - first spam message sent on ARPANET or 1 May 1776 - birth of the Illuminati)), but many are negative (26 April 1986 - Chernobyl or 31 January 1915 - 1st large use of gas in warfare). A word of warning, James Fell does freely use language not permitted on the radio, so avoid if you are allergic to this type of language. This is the type of book that you can keep on hand to browse while passing time.

Thanks Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this compilation of events.

This is a unique history book that will appeal to a select group of people. Each historical event is covered in 1-2 pages of information peppered with profanity and sarcasm. There is no order, no index, no table of contents. The reader is expected to just read at will, although I found it better to skip around than to read page by page. In some instances, the entries could lead readers to look for more information elsewhere, The unnecessary language turned me off pretty quickly, as I think it will most people, although there may be a select group who will enjoy it. Thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine, and Bantam for providing an ARC.

I’m a certified book nerd. Thanks to James Fell, I now find that I’m an history geek as well. On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down is chock-full of engrossing historical facts presented in a day by day format. The best part of this book is the way that the information is presented. It humorously points out the good, the bad, and the ugly of history from all over the world. I liked this book so much that I have already pre-ordered a copy for me and for my son who is a high school history teacher. I challenge anyone to take an entire year to read this book. I just couldn’t put it down no matter what the date said at the top of the page.

Good book and good author. And this book is not for young children.I will buy this book when it comes out.

Shit happens. Daily. James Fell documents the shit that happens and what day it happens on. Sadly not as witty as it could be. Galley provided by NetGalley

I don't usually read a lot of non-fiction, but this is an enjoyable fact-a-day type book. If you have a problem with cussing this is NOT the book for you. It made history interesting and I plan on reading each day's facts to start my morning.

This is a fun and interesting book. It’s presented in a devotional-style, with dated entries for each day of the year. For each date, an event from history is detailed that happened on that date in some past year.

As you can probably guess from the title, it’s a bit irreverent with the casual and blue language but it reads well and the history snippets are fascinating. Many of the events are known to me but some of them are not, and some are quite shocking.

Presenting the historical facts in these small, digestible, dated chunks makes this nonfiction book more accessible for readers who may be intimidated by nonfiction history books. I think this would be a fun book to keep in your bathroom or on your nightstand to read just the one bit each day for a year; but, I found myself getting interested and reading ahead, so it won’t take that long for me to finish it!

Bite-sized history with humor and bad language makes it appealing to high schoers! And to me. I've already purchased for myself and will recommend to others.

On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down by James Fell. What could have been interesting little known tidbits of history completely overshadowed by profanity and sarcasm.

Not quite sure about thanking the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview the book.
.

What an excellent way to teach history! Short, rude, wake-you-up bits of history and amuse at the same time! My adult son is a huge history reader and he loves this book. It also perfect to absorb all those historical facts that will help you win at trivia! Fun read for the entire family.

Great book to leave out on the coffee table. :)

Just enough on each page to make it in depth but not too much overall. I overall enjoyed this book from the moment I opened it up and the author dedicates it to his dads, and he calls them cool mother fi/&/ers.

Definitely a fun history book. Who knew that adding an edgy 12 year old take to language would make history even more fun to read? At first I thought it would get annoying but I kept finding myself going back to read more.