Welcome to Wikipedia

,

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

117,824 active editors
6,942,335 articles in English

From today's featured article

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. He was a frontier lawyer and briefly served in the House of Representatives and the Senate, representing Tennessee. He became a wealthy planter who owned hundreds of African-American slaves during his lifetime. In 1801, he was appointed colonel of the Tennessee militia and was elected its commander. In the War of 1812 against the British, Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero. He later commanded U.S. forces in the First Seminole War, which led to the annexation of Florida from Spain. He was elected president in 1828, defeating John Quincy Adams in a landslide. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act. This act displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi and resulted in thousands of deaths. Jackson's legacy remains controversial, and opinions on his legacy are frequently polarized. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Did you know ...

Burma

... that Burma the elephant (pictured) once escaped Auckland Zoo?
... that the dance drama Rain of Flowers Along the Silk Road used movements inspired by cave paintings?
... that Sher Machado created a League of Legends tournament exclusively for transgender people?
... that Capote Falls is the highest waterfall in Texas, and the only location where Hinckley's columbine occurs in the wild?
... that the Legend of Aphroditian identifies the Greek goddess Hera with the Virgin Mary?
... that a bishop complained to the pope that Princess Alice of Antioch refused to share her raiding spoils with him?
... that streets in a neighborhood in Mexico were renamed after concepts and projects associated with Andrés Manuel López Obrador?
... that state representative Karl Bohnak, referring to his former profession, said that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was one of the most challenging places in the U.S. to forecast the weather?
... that Efrim Menuck, the guitarist of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, likened the composition of Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven to film editing?

In the news

David Lynch in 1990

A ceasefire agreement is reached to suspend the Israel–Hamas war, involving the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
American filmmaker David Lynch (pictured) dies at the age of 78.
South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol is arrested after his declaration of martial law.
In Chad, the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement retains a majority in the National Assembly amidst a boycott by opposition parties.

On this day

January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990); Inauguration Day in the United States (2025); Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States (2025)

Roller coasters

1265 – Simon de Montfort summoned local representatives to the Palace of Westminster to attend a parliament, now considered to be the forerunner of the House of Commons of England.
1840 – William II became King of the Netherlands after his father William I abdicated the throne.
1885 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson, sometimes called the "Father of Gravity", patented the roller coaster (pictured).
1945 – World War II: In an operation that took nearly two months to complete, Germany began the evacuation of at least 1.8 million people from East Prussia in anticipation of the advancing Soviet Red Army.
2018 – A group of Taliban gunmen attacked and took hostages at the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, Afghanistan, sparking a 12-hour battle that left at least 21 people dead.

Sebastian Münster (b. 1488)
Agnes Mary Clerke (d. 1907)
Yolanda González (b. 1961)
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (b. 1965)

More anniversaries:

From today's featured list

Presidents George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter

Since the presidency of the United States was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 46 presidencies. The president of the United States is the head of state and government, elected indirectly for a four-year term via the Electoral College, leads the executive branch of the federal government, and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College, and was the only one never affiliated with a political party. William Henry Harrison's presidency was the shortest, at 31 days. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest in office, over twelve years, and is the only president to serve more than two terms. Since the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, no person may be elected president more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of another president's term may be elected more than once. (Full list...)

Recently featured:

Today's featured picture

Racial segregation in the United States included the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from White Americans, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority communities. Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment and transportation in the United States have been systematically separated based on racial categorizations. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), so long as "separate but equal" facilities were provided, a requirement that was rarely met. The doctrine's applicability to public schools was unanimously overturned in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and several landmark cases including Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964) further ruled against racial segregation, helping to bring an end to the Jim Crow laws. During the civil rights movement, de jure segregation was formally outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, while de facto segregation continues today in areas including residential segregation and school segregation, as part of ongoing racism and discrimination in the United States. This photograph, taken in 1939 by Russell Lee, shows an African-American man drinking at a water dispenser, with a sign reading "Colored", in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City.

Photograph credit: Russell Lee; restored by Adam Cuerden

Recently featured:

Other areas of Wikipedia

Community portal – The central hub for editors, with resources, links, tasks, and announcements.
Village pump – Forum for discussions about Wikipedia itself, including policies and technical issues.
Site news – Sources of news about Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia movement.
Teahouse – Ask basic questions about using or editing Wikipedia.
Help desk – Ask questions about using or editing Wikipedia.
Reference desk – Ask research questions about encyclopedic topics.
Content portals – A unique way to navigate the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia's sister projects

Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects: