Having a big line of encyclopedias on your shelf would seem like a huge waste of space these days. But it used to be a thing.
Happy 25th birthday to WIKIPEDIA! The first Wikipedia post was on January 15th, 2001, two days after they registered the domain.
The first entry in their database was posted on January 15th at 2:27 P.M. Eastern. All it said was, “This is the new WikiPedia!” (Co-founder Jimmy Wales says the first post may have actually been “Hello, World!”, but it got deleted.)
It wasn’t the first online encyclopedia. Another one called Nupedia launched in 2000, but didn’t last because they only let “experts” write about stuff.
Wikipedia lets ANYONE post, then other people review it, and actual “facts” get locked in. Still, it’s not always accurate. (Estimates range from 80% accuracy to more like 99%, depending on the topic.)
Just under 20,000 entries were added the first year. By 2008, there were over two million, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled. A collection in China dating back to 1408 held the record for 600 years.
Today, you can read Wikipedia pages in over 300 languages. The English version alone covers more than seven million topics.
(Is Wikipedia on its way out though? They had an 8% drop in traffic last year because so many people are using A.I. to look stuff up.)
