The Top 25 Report
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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 10 to 16, 2020)
editPrepared with commentary by Igordebraga and Rebestalic
It's now visible that people are losing interest in the COVID-19 pandemic--at least for this week anyway. The article for Michael Jordan came out first, while the Elon Musk-Grimes buzz kept on for a bit. Some listings made it here through the deaths of their subjects (think Jerry Stiller and Little Richard, among others). Interestingly, articles concerning events run by UFC and WWE crept in as well.
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about 1 Michael Jordan 1,811,148 NBA: "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."
Michael Jeffrey Jordan, born February 17, 1963, has lived a life in basketball--as far as I know, the latest time that he started playing basketball was by the time he was in high school. Even though he has since retired, he continues to involve himself in the NBA; currently acting as the owner of the Charlotte Hornets. He recently featured on TV series The Last Dance.2 Jerry Stiller 1,547,994 Jerry Stiller was an American actor, comedian, author and voice-over artist. You might know him as the man behind Frank on the sitcom Seinfeld, or being the father of actor Ben (#9), who took on the voicing role of Alex the Lion from the Madagascar films. Stiller the elder's career spanned over sixty years, only stopping four years before his recent death (on May the 11th this year). 3 COVID-19 pandemic 1,356,237 Well... I guess it's something all too known by now. 4 Little Richard 1,187,234 Also known as 'The Innovator', 'The Originator' and 'The Architect of Rock and Roll', Richard Wayne Penniman was a musician who essentially pioneered rock and roll music. He died on the 9th this month. 5 Elon Musk 1,070,021 Directly involved in the founding or initial stages of SpaceX, Tesla, Inc., The Boring Company and what is now PayPal, among others. Musk has recently had a child with Canadian musician Grimes (#25), X Æ A-12 Musk; the first name is pronounced either 'Ex Ash A Twelve' or 'Ex Aye Aye'. 6 Deaths in 2020 938,698 Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic appear to account for around 1.5% of the total number, ~22.4 million (oh man, that's HUGE). 7 UFC 249 878,662 A UFC bout whose main event was a fight that pitted Tony Ferguson against Justin Gaethje on May the 9th. Gaethje won. 8 6ix9ine 818,620 6ix9ine has recently released a new album, named '692*'; its last track, GOOBA, is hot stuff on lyric provider Genius (and has amassed almost 3 million views there since; for comparison, Eminem's wildly popular (at least where I'm from) "Godzilla" has 4.4 million, and Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" has 1 million - a note that rap songs fare better at Genius due to its user demographics and it being originally founded as a dedicated rap site). 9 Ben Stiller 771,159 Son of Jerry (#2), a recent death. 10 Fred Willard 719,747 Fred Willard, another American actor (as well as a comedian and writer), resonates most to me through his role as Shelby Forthright in WALL-E. You might know him for something else; there's a lot of things that he did in his career (which spanned 61 years, just one short of Jerry Stiller's (#2)). 11 Anne Meara 690,470 Wife of Jerry Stiller (#2), a recent death. Meara passed away in 2015. 12 Anthony Fauci 685565 The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases... since 1984. 1984!!! Think of life in 1984! Well, thankfully it isn't a totalitarian dystopia as George Orwell proposed in his Nineteen Eighty-Four (although it is a good read). Let's take the then (and still now) rapidly growing computer industry--'84 was the debut year of the original Macintosh computer, released by what was still 'Apple Computer'. The original Macintosh, also called the '128K', had 128 kilobytes of RAM (hence the name) and a CPU, essentially, that ran at the grand and almighty speed of... six megahertz, a speed which some mainstream CPUs today could beat by more than three hundred times. Yeah, people back then had a lot to look forward to. Indeed, it's likely that PCs were still so new at the time that normal people still referred to them as 'Microcomputers' rather than just 'Computers'.
Anyway, Mr. Fauci is an active member in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and is big player in the medical field, apparently being one of the most cited scientists in the world at one point.13 Money in the Bank (2020) 631,030 According to WWE, for this event, the risk was worth the reward.
Money in the Bank is an annual wrestling event held by the World Wrestling Federation; this year's edition was the eleventh in the Money in the Bank series. From what I've read, it appears that the wrestlers involved were tasked with obtaining a briefcase at the top of a building, fighting their way up from the ground floor in the process. For the women's category, the winner was Japanese wrestler Asuka; the men's category was won by Otis.14 Justin Gaethje 630,631 Winner of the main event of UFC 249 (#7). 15 Dead to Me (TV series) 604,697 Dead to Me is a dark comedy (like, the type of comedy that involves people hurting themselves, etc) television series released by Netflix. Linda Cardellini (pictured) and Christina Applegate are the stars. 16 Mother's Day 548,726 After all, people, it's your mother who brought you into the world. Honestly, drop the 'Yo mamma' jokes, even though I might have a giggle (at the notion that she could lower the prices in Walmart stores by sitting on them, for example). Mother's day was founded in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908. 17 Garry Marshall 500,197 Garry Marshall was an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and actor. That's a lot of jobs right there, and it's a shame that he's gone now. Happily (that wasn't meant as a pun), the American Broadcasting Company decided to make a celebration series about him that aired just days ago (at time of writing); 'The Happy Days of Garry Marshall'. How sweet! If you get round to watching it, apparently it has everything from sombre 'miss-you' speeches to how Mr. Marshall didn't want to turn left while driving. 18 Diriliş: Ertuğrul 497,550 Diriliş: Ertuğrul (Resurrection: Ertuğrul in English) is a Turkish television series that could make history as being home to a channel that could break the world record for most YouTube subscribers in a month (if you wanted to know, 'ğ' is essentially a silent letter in Turkish). Its boom is due to its airing by the Pakistan Television Corporation, which serves, unsurprisingly, the people of Pakistan, of whom collectively number about 200 million in total. 19 Rock Hudson 493,771 Rock Hudson was an American actor who shone most in the Hollywood Golden Age; think 1910s to '60s. Although he died more than thirty years ago, his legacy is currently being lived on by (at least) Netflix's Hollywood, a recently released miniseries. 20 Spanish flu 489,977 The intensity of the current pandemic has, ever since its early days, drawn comparisons of another pandemic that occurred about a hundred years ago; the Spanish flu. This pandemic concerned a strain of Influenza belonging to the H1N1 group. 21 Dennis Rodman 489,548 After his attempted suicide in '93, former basketball player Dennis Rodman became, in short, a bad boy. A very bad one. One who dated Madonna, briefly married Carmen Electra, befriended North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The Last Dance chronicles some of his exploits (such as him taking a break mid-season to party in Vegas, or skipping practice in the 1998 NBA Finals to take part in wrestling events!). 22 Scottie Pippen 479,350 Former Chicago Bulls player, and Michael Jordan (#1) teammate. It appears that he featured in The Last Dance along with Jordan. 23 List of NBA champions 477,234 Again, this is most probably a The Last Dance-related surge in views. Well, there are a lot of champions out there, I'll start with that. 24 Catherine the Great 469,730 Catherine II, of Russia, was the longest-ruling female ruler of the country. She lived in the distant 1700s, and helped speed Russia forward into the top spots of world power. Her life and achievements have been loosely alluded to in the recent miniseries The Great, starring Elle Fanning, which (to me) is surprisingly not a Netflix production; it's from Hulu. 25 Grimes (musician) 456,565 Partner of Elon Musk (#5), and mother of recently-born X Æ A-12 Musk.