Year Wheel
Spin for a year from 1900 to 2026. Change the two fields above the list to set your own range.
No spins yet. Each pick is listed here in order.
About the year wheel
On this page every number is a calendar year. The wheel opens with the years 1900 to 2026, 127 of them, one slice per year. Each year has a 1 in 127 chance on every spin, or 0.787%, and the line under the wheel shows it.
The wheel only names the year. It knows nothing about what happened in it, so looking the year up is your part of the game. Need a complete made-up date? Get the year here, then spin the Random Date Wheel for the day and the month.
To narrow the wheel, put the first and last year you want into “Lowest number” and “Highest number”, above the list of entries, and press “Fill the wheel”. With 1980 and 1999, for example, you get a wheel for a quiz about two decades. Any run of whole numbers loads, up to 1,000 years at once.
What to do with a random year
- Give a made-up character a birth year, then work out how old they are in your story.
- Music or movie quiz: spin a year and have each team name something that came out in it.
- History class: each student spins a year, looks it up and reports one thing they found.
- Time-travel story prompt: the year on the wheel is where your character lands.
How to use the wheel
- Type or paste your options, one per line. The wheel redraws as you type.
- Press Spin, click the wheel, or press Ctrl+Enter while you are in the list.
- Read the pick. Remove it from the wheel if nobody should be picked twice, then spin again.
How the pick is made
Before the wheel moves, your browser draws one slice at random with crypto.getRandomValues, the same generator browsers use for security keys. Every slice has the same chance. The spin you watch only plays that result out.
Nothing about the animation changes the outcome: not how hard you click, not how long the wheel turns, not the size of your screen. The pointer always stops inside a slice, never on a line.
Your list stays in your browser. A link you copy carries the list inside the link itself, so nothing is uploaded.
Questions about the year wheel
- Can I use years outside 1900 to 2026?
- Yes. The two fields take any whole numbers, so the range can start earlier or end later. Once the wheel holds more than 150 years, the slices lose their labels and the result window shows the year.
- How do I spin several years without a repeat?
- Switch on “Remove the winner after each spin”. A year that has been drawn is then off the wheel until you press “Fill the wheel” again.
- Can the wheel pick a decade instead of one year?
- Yes, with your own list. Press “Clear list” and type the decades one per line, such as 1980s and 1990s. Each line is one slice, so every decade has the same chance.
- Can I take single years off the wheel?
- Yes. Delete their lines in the list next to the wheel and it redraws without them. The line under the wheel then shows how many years are left and the new chance of each.