Happy 2nd Birthday!

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A black, white, and dark blue striped header image with the text Happy 2nd Birthday!

Today marks the second birthday of Abby Epplett, Historian. Two years ago, I posted my first review, which featured the “How Do You See the World?” Experience & Mapparium. Last year, on the first birthday of the blog, I counted down my top ten best performing posts, along with giving a general overview about blog viewership, and I will do the same this year. This is the 281st post for the blog, bringing me to 156 posts in my second year, compared to 125 posts in my first year.

In the past year, the blog has received about 13,600 views. While not a large number for the internet, this is a huge increase compared to last year’s 3,145 views. This averages to about 1,133 views a month, or about 37 views a day, remembering that this is a leap year. Without further ado, here is my countdown for this year:

  1. Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Overview of Appendix A “Annals of Kings and Rulers” | 37 Views
    I released this essay last Sunday, so it is still garnering regular views, but it has already cracked the top ten for this past year. I launched the LOTRAM series on January 30, 2024, and traffic to the blog has steadily increased in response to this new type of article. Not all of these articles are winners, as the histories of musical theater and documentaries were a hard sell, although I’ve had a great time writing all of them. I won’t spoil the countdown, but I will let you know that four more of these articles appear on the list.
  2. Christmas in Woodstock, CT | 43 Views
    Local and seasonal in-person events always get a decent number of views. The view count is slightly higher than last year’s view count for #7, Travels with George, Talk by Nathaniel Philbrick, where a well-known author visited Uxbridge and gave an entertaining history presentation. Counted as 36 in 2023, that same post now has 62 views, placing it at #11 all time.
  3. Quick History Stops: Whitinsville | 43 Views
    This post benefited from my Instagram following. While I am no influencer, many of my followers are from the Blackstone Valley area and always looking for fun history activities. This post was preferred over my more recent post, Historic Trolley Tour of Whitinsville, although the material was similar.
  4. Historic New England Summit, Day 1 | 50 Views
    This widely attended two-day conference was held in Providence, RI. Like the previous year’s Summit, this was among the best historical get-togethers of the season. Those who could not attend the conference were likely interested in the summary. My summary for Day 2 of the conference fell outside the top ten with 31 views.
  5. Fortaleza San Luis | 54 Views
    This review of a fort in Santiago de Caballeros was the only post from my Dominican Republic trip to crack the top ten. However, the material did well on another platform. I added abbreviated versions of my post to Google Maps as a Google Guide and gained many Dominican followers, bringing my total to 181 as of today. Again, I am by no means an influencer, but I am continually shocked by the number of people interested in my little reviews.
  6. World War II Comes to the Valley 2023 | 58 Views
    This event was hosted by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park in partnership with several local nonprofit organizations. As a local and seasonal in-person event, it did well with my Instagram followers and others from my area. This was also the highest ranking blog post to have what I would consider a normal number of views for my blog. On we go to the top four.
  7. Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Prologue, 4 Of the Finding of the Ring | 102 Views
    As hinted back at #10, a total of five LOTRAM essays reached the top ten. The best four took the top four slots. I had hoped for a few extra views for my fairly niche interest, and while these posts did not go viral by internet standards, they received more interest than I anticipated. This article likely benefited from following my two most successful posts to date.
  8. Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Introduction to the Appendixes | 196 Views
    While I am continually surprised by how well this series does, I was especially surprised by this essay. This intro launched a series within a series and focused on the history of the modern publishing industry, how appendixes work, and what The Lord of the Rings appendixes contain. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to only a specific type of academic, and yet the internet is filled with us.
  9. Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Prologue, 2 Concerning Pipe-weed | 255 Views
    This was the first post to warn me that LOTRAM could possibly be successful. I covered the history of smoking around the world using a range of articles focused on colonialism, cultural misappropriation, and healthcare. This struck a chord with some people, possibly aficionados of real-world pipe-weed.
  10. Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Prologue, 3 On the Ordering of the Shire | 328 Views
    By far the most popular post of all time on the blog, this article talked about feudalism, the Medicis, post-medieval Europe, policing in the West, and the postal service. Clearly, these were all factors in its popularity. I really have no idea why this post did so well, except that the specific type of academic was enthralled.

While the blog is not about to take any sharp turns in different directions, I will continue to explore why the LOTRAM series has been more popular than other posts, along with giving updates to my adventures throughout New England. I hope for another exciting and historical year on the blog!