25 years of Wikipedia
Today, Wikipedia is the backbone of knowledge on the internet—but everything has to start somewhere. For Wikipedia, that was a blank website and a dream. Quantum teleportation? An internet that grows like a garden? Find out what's in your future with this quick quiz. It was just another day: 15 January 2001. Jimmy Wales booted up his computer and wrote the words "Hello, World!" into a blank website called Wikipedia. Its name came from the "wiki" software developed by Ward Cunningham. Jimmy was optimistic, but he knew he was taking a risk. Nobody knew if the encyclopedic experiment would succeed. Against all odds, it has. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia—it provides educational material to everyone. The twist is that volunteer editors write it all. Those volunteers fact check the information and cite trustworthy sources, and are committed to documenting information from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia seeks to inform, not persuade. In 2025, Wikipedia is there for all the people looking t
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