Welcome to Wikipedia

,

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

From today's featured article

Scene from the play's opening run

The Importance of Being Earnest is a drawing-room comedy by Oscar Wilde. Premiered on 14 February 1895 in London, it depicts the affairs of two young men about town who lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name Ernest to woo two young women. Other characters are the formidable Lady Bracknell, the fussy governess Miss Prism and the benign and scholarly Canon Chasuble. The play, celebrated for its wit and repartee, parodies contemporary dramatic norms and comically satirises late-Victorian manners. The triumphant opening night was followed within weeks by Wilde's downfall and imprisonment for homosexual acts and the closure of the production, and Wilde wrote no more comic or dramatic works. From the early 20th century onwards, the play has been revived frequently and adapted for radio, television, film, operas and musicals. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Did you know ...

Kiki Wong

... that heavy-metal guitarist Kiki Wong (pictured) played drums for Taylor Swift before joining the Smashing Pumpkins?
... that during the colonial period, Indonesia was the largest exporter of tea outside of the British Raj and Ceylon?
... that the director of Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds once described the film as "gaysploitation"?
... that Xu Xinfu adapted the fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan for Chinese audiences?
... that large aircraft once operated on a regular basis from Griffin–Spalding County Airport despite it only having a 3,100-foot-long (940 m) runway?
... that Susanne Craig won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her reporting on Donald Trump's taxes after receiving a copy of his tax records in her mailbox?
... that New York City's Hotel Marseilles, once a shelter for Holocaust survivors, later became affordable housing for the elderly?
... that the Union of Assyrians's mishandling of shoe polishing stations led to violent conflicts in 1920's Moscow?
... that a Ukrainian tax administrator began a program to open 60 ice rinks within five years?

In the news

Yoav Gallant

Following parliamentary elections, Gintautas Paluckas is elected by the Seimas as the new Prime Minister of Lithuania.
The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant (pictured), and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif in its investigation of war crimes in Palestine.
Forty-five pro-democracy activists are sentenced under the Hong Kong national security law for their participation in the 2020 pro-democracy primaries.
In motorcycle racing, Jorge Martín wins the MotoGP World Championship.

On this day

November 24: Feast day of the Vietnamese Martyrs (Catholicism)

Hibiscus Rising

1542 – Anglo-Scottish Wars: English forces captured about 1,200 Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss.
1859 – British naturalist Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published, and sold out its initial print run on the first day.
1976 – A magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck eastern Turkey, destroying 80 per cent of buildings in the region and causing at least 4,000 casualties.
2009 – The Avdhela Project, an Aromanian digital library and cultural initiative, was launched in Bucharest, Romania.
2023 – Hibiscus Rising (pictured), a sculpture commemorating the life of David Oluwale, was unveiled in Leeds.

Zachary Taylor (b. 1784)
Eileen Barton (b. 1924)
Tarō Yamamoto (b. 1974)
Goo Hara (d. 2019)

More anniversaries:

Today's featured picture

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects. The target object, Dimorphos, is a 160-meter-long (525-foot) minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos. DART was launched on 24 November 2021 and successfully collided with Dimorphos on 26 September 2022 while about 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth. The collision shortened Dimorphos's orbit by 32 minutes and was mostly achieved by the momentum transfer associated with the recoil of the ejected debris, which was larger than the impact. This video is a timelapse of DART's final five and a half minutes before impacting Dimorphos, and was compiled from photographs captured by the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), the spacecraft's 20-centimeter-aperture (7.9-inch) camera, and transmitted to Earth in real time. The replay is ten times faster than reality, except for the last six images, which are shown at the same rate at which the spacecraft returned them. Both Didymos and Dimorphos are visible at the start of the video, and the final frame shows a patch of Dimorphos's surface 16 meters (51 feet) across. DART's impact occurred during transmission of the final image, resulting in a partial frame.

Video credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL

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: