Are there any public APIs with databases of historical facts?

Question

The most common source of free historical information is Wikipedia, but I am missing an API that could be used to e.g. query all things that happened on January 23rd 2010. Some iPhone apps have databases behind (www.historysurferapp.com comes to mind, but also a ton of "what happened today" apps") but they seem home-grown and/or wikipedia-based.

Anyone knows if there is such a public "timeline of everything" database somewhere?

Answer 1

The closest thing is Wikipedia. The answer is No.

EDIT: These are a few I have found since asking this question:

http://thebigdb.com/

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

EDIT2: http://gdeltproject.org/ - Global Database Of Events