Photo Roulette is a fun little game from Library of Congress. The game shows you a randomly selected pictures from the LOC’s digital collections and you have to guess the year in which the picture was taken. You have ten guesses before you’re out of luck. After the submission of each guess you’re given a hint as to which way to make your next guess. For example, if you’re first guess is off by being ten years too early, Photo Roulette will give you a clue like “turn the calendar.” When you do make a correct guess, you’ll be able to see the image source and read more about the context of when the image was taken.

Applications for Education
Photo Roulette could be a fun activity to use in a history class. Encourage students to use some context clues and their knowledge of history to make educated guesses.

If you have the technical chops, you can use the code for the LOC’s Photo Roulette to make your own version of the game.