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We have all relied on Wikipedia's knowledge at least a few times in our lives, no matter whether we admit it or not. After all, Wikipedia has an article on nearly every topic you can think of. In fact, it even has articles on topics you wouldn't even imagine! And they range from mildly interesting to extremely wild. So, today, let's take a trip through the list of wild Wikipedia articles and broaden our horizons on strange topics.
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#1
I personally really like Lampo (dog) It's about a dog from Italy that became famous for travelling Italy by trains all by himself.
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#2
The timeline of Irish inventions
There’s a 300 year gap between the invention of whiskey and the next listed invention.
Donkey boi 9 months ago
Yeah, well... We were busy. Doing err... Product quality checks. Nah, in all seriousness though; Shortly after the invention of Whiskey, the black death hit Ireland, which (may or may not have) contributed to the slow decline of Norman Rule, causing a lot of them to marry into Irish ruling classes, resulting in Ireland learning how to rule itself while still not fully ruling itself without the influence from the Normans. By the time we think we had it figured out, Henry VIII decided that they (England) should have another go at Ireland. So, we had a lot of wars. By the time things had settled down in was now the 17th Century, and we were bored so decided to invent chemistry as we know it today (Bye bye alchemists!).
#3
There's a wikipedia page on the human race.
That's not weird. The weird part is that, per Wikipedia style guidelines, it's written in the third person, which, in context, makes the whole thing sound like it was written by aliens.
spicy (she/he/they) 9 months ago
“the humans are now going batshit.” is the closing line i feel like
As probably everyone knows, Wikipedia is a non-profit multilingual online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The page uses the "wisdom of crowds" principle, where it’s believed that large groups of people are collectively smarter than individual experts. So, Wikipedia relies on volunteers to improve the quality and accuracy of the pages over time and on writers to back up factual statements with valid sources.
#4
A real life Forrest Gump. Made one clueless financial decision after another and kept getting richer. Was fooled into shipping "coal to Newcastle" (where the saying came from) but made a serious profit because it arrived right before a miner's strike.
Got tired of his wife and told people she died. When they visited and saw her walking around the house, he just said that was her ghost.
Pedantic Panda 9 months ago
Timothy Dexter, poorly educated but got rich but wasn't liked by the rest of them because of his lack of education. He made money from ventures that others thought foolish, but he still made the money.
#5
David 9 months ago
We he was an elite commando in WW2 operating deep behind Nazi lines. That is why when they filmed LOTR and Peter Jackson told him when he character gets stabed from behind to gasp and fall forward and he told Jackson that wasnt accurate how someone dies when stabbed through the lungs from behind because he knew was it was first hand (I mean he did kill Nazis)
#6
List of unusual deaths. This page catalogs instances throughout history where individuals have met their demise in bizarre, unexpected, or seemingly improbable ways. From historical figures to ordinary people, the list includes deaths resulting from strange accidents, curious circumstances, and sometimes even tragicomic events. Some entries may seem like they're straight out of fiction, but they are based on documented accounts and historical records. It's a fascinating, albeit morbid, exploration of the unpredictable nature of life and the strange ways in which it can end.
Yet, the editing isn’t as simple as it sounds. There are some rules to abide by if you want to make some edits to the encyclopedia. For instance, not putting in fake information, avoiding opinions, and sticking to valid facts. To make sure these rules are implemented, Wikipedia administrators sometimes protect certain pages from direct editing if they believe they can be subjected to online vandalism.
The Wiki administrators can usually identify the IP address and rough location of people editing articles, letting them spot suspicious behavior patterns. So, if a person gets caught misbehaving, their account can be suspended, even if the person isn’t identified.
#7
The Unkillable Soldier. Wiki’s first paragraph really says all you need to know about him.
#8
The names of traditional Scottish foods are wild. I was first introduced to this page by someone who was playing "Scottish dish or STD?" >Cullen skink >Collops >Festy c**k.
#9
There's an operating system called TempleOS that's created by a sole programmer called Terry A. Davis.
it's nuts because not only he developed an operating system, which is incredibly hard to do especially for one person, but he even created his own compiler, kernel, and a programming language to go with it.
most crazy part was that Terry has schizophrenia and had visions of God, which lead him to make an operating system that's supposed to act as the Third Temple. the OS runs on 16-colour display and 640x480 resolution "as God intended".
also on TempleOS there's a random text generator that is supposed to be God directly communicating to you.
Robert T 9 months ago
Not sure it was terribly successful, but if you're interested in stuff like that, read about Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds. Stallman created his own version of Unix, GNU. And Torvalds created Linux. For a very long time Torvalds had the final say on everything that went into the Linux kernel. He is known for being very sweary and not suffering fools gladly!
Still, even with all these rules and protections, there have been many times when Wikipedia had some funny or even harmful mistakes in its articles.
For example, it was written that David Beckham was a Chinese goalkeeper back in the 18th century or that The Duchess of Cornwall's Christian name is Cow-miller. Also, there have been many blunders reporting the death of a very alive person.
And even though some of you might say that some of the articles in this list should be in the blunders list instead of this one, you would be mistaken. Yes, we agree that some of them sound quite unbelievable, but they’re true!
So, upvote the articles you think are the wildest! And maybe you know some we haven’t put in here? Share them with us in the comments!
#10
Unusual articles is an absolute goldmine.
Susan Robinson 9 months ago
Now I know what I am going to look at when I am tired of looking at YouTube, etc. 😊
#11
My favorite one is perhaps the one about Nils Olav. It's my favorite Wikipedia article ever.
#12
The talk page for the article on Saladin has been a war between Arab, Turk, and Kurd nationalists arguing over his ethnicity since Wikipedia started.
*checks*
Yup. Still going on. The simple seven word sentence that he was most likely Kurdish is backed by 5 whole citations just because the article for years was defined by flame and edit wars over the topic.
David 9 months ago
He was a Kurd, but Arabs look down on Kurds and racially oppressed them for centuries, and because Saladin was a great leader of Egypt and led huge Arab armies against the Europeans, he became venerated in the Arab world. But now many arabs are trying to revise history to deny he was a Kurd because of those racial issues.
#13
The wikipedia page titled, "Timeline of the Far Future", is kind of mind-blowing. It describes the year 10^10^10^56th: "Around this vast timeframe, quantum tunnelling in any isolated patch of the universe could generate new inflationary events, resulting in new Big Bangs giving birth to new universes.".
#14
Former Major League Baseball(MLB) Player Rube Waddell.
Here is the first paragraph under the **Early baseball career** heading.
**"Waddell's career wound through a number of teams. He was notably unpredictable; early in his career, he once left in the middle of a game to go fishing. He also had a longstanding fascination with fire trucks and ran off the field to chase after them during games on multiple occasions. He would disappear for months at a time during the offseason, and it was not known where he went until it was discovered that he was wrestling alligators in a circus. He was easily distracted by opposing fans who held up puppies, which caused him to run over to play with them, and shiny objects, which seemed to put him in a trance. An alcoholic for much of his short life, he reportedly spent his entire first signing bonus on a drinking binge; as a pun of the baseball term "southpaw" denoting a left-handed pitcher, the Sporting News dubbed him a "sousepaw". His eccentric behavior led to constant battles with his managers and scuffles with bad-tempered teammates"**
#15
Tycho Brahe was a world renown astronomer who had gold in his mouth and died at a party because he refused to excuse himself from a conversation to go to the bathroom and relieve himself.
#16
Cavader Synod
A pope had the corpse of his predecessor exhumed and put on trial.
David 9 months ago
It was in the so called dark ages period, where they had many popes in a very short time (some mysterious deaths, and 3in one year) while dealing with an internal debate over theology, so one faction did that as part of legitimizing their undoing of all the papal edicts of that specific pope
#17
I've always been a fan of List of lists of lists.
Darius S. (he/him) cis/grey 9 months ago
in just 16 clicks I got to an article list of Stress Effects on Memory and realized that I was still reading this BP listicle. went all the way through the Identity of human truth until i was learning about my ptsd and thought 'scrolling through BP helps me destress from symptoms..oops, gotta go . Sumo is starting.
#18
Ken McElroy. A man who terrorized Skidmore Missouri but could never be convicted. And by *terrorized* I mean multiple counts of theft, arson, assault, and rape. Finally the town had enough, banded together, and shot him in broad daylight. No one talked to the police and no one was ever charged for his murder. Here is a small Wikipedia excerpt to let you know what kind of monster he was: > McElroy fathered more than 10 children with different women. He met his last wife, Trena McCloud (1957–2012), when she was 12 years old and in eighth grade and he was 35. He raped McCloud repeatedly. McCloud's parents initially opposed the relationship, but after McElroy burned their house down and shot the family dog, they begrudgingly agreed to the marriage. She became pregnant when she was fourteen, dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and went to live with McElroy and his second wife Alice.
Blue Bunny of Happiness 9 months ago
I don’t think I have the words to describe McElroy, certainly not ones that are BP approved!
#19
The 1972 Iran blizzard dropped 26 feet of snow in 6 days. It buried at least 4,000 people, and some villages were completely wiped out with no survivors.
#20
Great Molasses Flood
I didn't think it was real.
Charles Greenough 9 months ago
There's a plaque commemorating it in Boston's North End. It's quite the story!
#21
The Gombe Chimpanzee War. Pretty sure it's the only known war to be fought between non-humans.
#22
Operation Snow White, not because its Wikipedia is unusual or anything, but because THIS WHOLE THING EVEN F*****G HAPPENED.
Libstak 9 months ago
That is wild. L Ron Hubbard is an amazing fiction writer. I say this to point out how utterly capable he is of convincing people of complete and utter b******t. He took ancient spiritual and widely known esoteric teachings from the Freemasons, Rosicrucian, Gnostic and others and used them as the exotic skeleton of an entirely new belief based on aliens, as was so popular in his time. The weave between accepted wisdom teachings and his "new" teaching was utterly masterful. It fooled millions who had no prior spiritual understanding into believing because the bare bones were so liberally caked in sociologically accepted norms in civilised thought. Then bang, random Xeno alien God thrown in to the mix for those who had already invested so much money and time they were primed to have to believe it or admit they fell for the ultimate con...no one wants to admit they are that foolish.
#23
The Erfort Latrine Disaster comes to mind.
Heleen the Feline Panda 9 months ago
"The Erfurt latrine disaster occurred on 26 July 1184, when Henry VI, King of Germany (later Holy Roman Emperor), held a Hoftag (informal assembly) in the cathedral provostry (in Erfurt). On the morning of 26 July, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse and most of them fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement. "
#24
The “My Way Killings”, where people in karaoke bars would get killed for singing My Way by Frank Sinatra wrong. Talking about gatekeeping in music.
Donkey boi 9 months ago
The article OP linked LITERALLY says it's because it was a popular song in a high violence location/situation, it says nothing about them being killed for singing the song wrong. I did think that this one was justified though: In August 2007, a karaoke singer in Seattle, Washington, was attacked by a woman who wanted him to stop singing Coldplay's "Yellow".
#25
The Đorđe Martinović incident where a man indirectly caused the collapse of a country in a most unusual manner.
#26
Honestly any mentioned in the Citation Needed or Two of These People are Lying gameshow youtube series. Jack Churchill, the madman with a bow and a claymore in WW2; Julie d'Aubigny, the 14 year old bisexual girl winning illegal duels and burning down convents pre-french revolution; the Ice Block Expedition, Victor Lustig, the man who sold the Eiffel tower (twice). Humanity's been up to some crazy s**t.
#27
Great Emu War, Toilet Paper Orientation, and yes this is not b******t but it is the List of Sexually Active Popes.
spicy (she/he/they) 9 months ago
i once saw something along the lines of “if i had a nickel for every time a pope died during sex i’d have two, which isn’t much but weird it happened twice”
#28
Corbin Bleu. The page itself isn't crazy since he's just an actor who appeared in the High School Musical movies. However his page has been translated into over 200 different language by one guy in Saudi Arabic which makes it one of the most translated biographies on Wikipedia.
#29
It's an internal page, but I still find it super funny. Do NOT bite the developers.
Darius S. (he/him) cis/grey 9 months ago
just like the lists of lists of lists article..i can come to Truthing in a couple of clicks. Once i found myself rabbit holing into loops.
#31
How has the Battle of Castle Itter not been mentioned? This should have been a movie by now!
#32
Tarrare, a Frenchman who would eat huge amounts of anything.
#34
I think the "coding" approach to addiction treatment is pretty wild.
ArodTheHorrible 9 months ago
Great... scare them right into using a different substance to deal with their fear
#35
The Wikipedia page on the Honda Ridgeline is surprisingly detailed compared to other comparable vehicles.
Tucker Cahooter 9 months ago
I would be sorely tempted to edit that article and remove everything except the first sentence
#36
#37
The page for "familial natural short sleep". Essentially, a small portion of the population (including Barak Obama, Musk, Mozart, Tesla, etc.) is just better than the rest of us. Not a long page as not a lot of research is being done on the topic, so have a read.
#38
George Remus was a member of organized crime who referred to himself in the first person and his wikipedia page is written in that style.
Tucker Cahooter 9 months ago
Referring to yourself in the first person is using the word "I", which of course everyone does. Tucker thinks this poster doesn't know what third person means
What do you think ?
Sardonyx_3 9 months ago
This list was worthwhile to read through. More articles like this, please!
OneHappyPuppy 9 months ago
My favourite must be the 15-hyperlink-clicks-on-wiki-sends-you-to-Hitlers-wiki-page. Basically, open any, absolutely random wiki page, then proceed to click on any hyperlink in that article. When it opens, click on any hyperlink in that one. Repeat, and count how many hyperlinks send you to Hitler. My record is 10
Alex Boyd 9 months ago
Are you talking about Six Clicks To Hitler, or is there another game with the same goal but different rules?
Load More Replies...
Stannous Flouride 9 months ago
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of my favorites because it has steadily grown over the years.
Sardonyx_3 9 months ago
This list was worthwhile to read through. More articles like this, please!
OneHappyPuppy 9 months ago
My favourite must be the 15-hyperlink-clicks-on-wiki-sends-you-to-Hitlers-wiki-page. Basically, open any, absolutely random wiki page, then proceed to click on any hyperlink in that article. When it opens, click on any hyperlink in that one. Repeat, and count how many hyperlinks send you to Hitler. My record is 10
Alex Boyd 9 months ago
Are you talking about Six Clicks To Hitler, or is there another game with the same goal but different rules?
Load More Replies... Stannous Flouride 9 months ago
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of my favorites because it has steadily grown over the years.
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