Introducing “This Day in U2 History”

Original Story by Aaron Sams (2019-04-08)

Yesterday we launched a new piece of the site, the History section. It’s available through the menu at the top of each page, or if you haven’t checked it out, you can check out today’s listings right now. Each page is dedicated to one day of the year. And on that page you will find information from throughout U2’s history that happened on that particular day. On the entry for October 31 you will see that it’s Larry’s birthday, that “Sweetest Thing” peaked at number 3 on the UK charts in 1998, that a reissued version of Achtung Baby was released in 2011, that U2 played a show at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence Rhode Island in 2001, and that we published a news story about the mysterious Songs of Experience letters fans were receiving in 2017. Once on a specific date you can easily surf to the next day or the day before, by clicking the Previous / Next links on each page. The addition to the site uses information from our news archive, our discography and our videos section to populate the individual dates.

There are eight main sections to each page. They only display if there is information present for that section so for those who may wonder here’s the full run down:

World Events:

This will include holidays, events that have happened in Ireland and elsewhere that have shaped U2, birthdays of those associated with U2 such as producers. We’re still populating things in a few areas, so this one may not pop up very often yet.

U2 History On This Day:

This is a place to see general events that happened such as U2 filming videos, winning awards, and reaching a peak position on the charts, as well as birthdays and other events.

U2 Album and EP Releases on This Day:

If there’s an album release, either the original release, or the remastered versions, you’ll see the album cover pop up here as well as information about the album from our discography. As always, you can click on links for additional information. We are only listing the first day of release for each album currently. In the past quite often, albums would be released on different days in different regions. We’ve chosen to list the first day of release throughout the history section.

Notable Single Releases on This Day:

Like the albums, if U2 released a single, we’ll list it here, with the artwork from the cover, and links to the discography. We can only link to releases that we have an exact day and month that they were released, but we’ve spent a number of years researching this and feel that the list you see through the history section will be pretty complete. If you have a question as to what we consider a single, we list those in the discography. It’s been a bit more difficult over the years to classify things with the onset of streaming, but we continue to define a single as a single song that has been commercially released for sale separate from the album, with unique art or other unique defining characteristics.

All Releases Containing U2 on This Day:

This will list not only the albums and singles that show up above, but every other entry that appears in the discography including things like promotional singles, soundtracks, various artist compilations and more. This includes solo work as well as full band projects.

Promotional U2 Videos Released on This Day:

This pulls from our video section, and will list any of those short video clips that U2 make to promote their current single on the day that it was released. If there’s one that was released on the day that you are viewing you’ll also see a screen grab from the video.

U2 Shows on This Day:

You can’t build something like this without looking at the live shows and performances over the years. We’ve done our best to capture them all from 1976 right up to the show Bono gave Christmas Eve outside the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. It includes solo and band appearances. If it’s a regular tour stop type appearance you’ll get the name of the venue, the city and country, as well as the year it was played. In square brackets you’ll get the name of the artist, U2, The Hype, The Dalton Brothers and Passengers all make an appearance, as do combinations of the boys in solo form. If it’s not a typical tour type stop there will be some additional information about the show and what took place.

Our show data is taken from a few places, with the primary source being the 2002 edition of U2 Live: A Concert Documentary by Pimm Jal De La Parra. That book continues to be a guide to all of U2’s shows, and is highly recommended if you wish to track a copy down. Further information was used from resources at U2Gigs.com, U2Start.com, U2tour.de, atu2.com. We also have to thank Ghostown1976.com for all the effort they have put into looking at the early days of U2’s tours. This has been supplemented with information from our own research on U2’s tours these past 18 years, while contributing to U2Tours, helping with the 2002 update of U2 Live and our team’s own attendance at U2 shows.

News Stories on This Day:

Finally we’ve linked in to our news database to give you stories that were published on each of these days. Admittedly, the coverage in this section is more tilted towards 2000 onward when we started keeping real notes on news over at U2Wanderer.org, but occasionally you’ll see some notable stories from other publications. If it’s an original story from us or from another source they are marked in each entry.

We worked on this with the goal in mind of posting it on our anniversary. There’s a few little things we are still working on and will continue to work on over the next few weeks. If you would like a great example of how it all looks when there has been a lot of activity we suggest a look at November 19, as there were album releases, single releases, and a video released on that day in various years. Another good day is December 1. We hope that you have a bit of fun with it all, whether you choose to look daily, or just pop by to check out a few special days along the way. We’ve added the link to the calendar view of all days at the top of each page, and are working on the integration on the front page. For now the link to find the current day will always be available on the front.

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