Welcome to Wikipedia

,

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

From today's featured article

The memorial after Remembrance Sunday, 2021

The Great Western Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger and Thomas S. Tait. It stands on platform 1 at London Paddington station, commemorating the 2,500 Great Western Railway (GWR) employees killed in the conflict. A third of the GWR's workforce of almost 80,000 left to fight in the war, the company guaranteeing their jobs. The memorial consists of a bronze statue of a soldier in heavy winter clothing, reading a letter from home. The statue stands on a polished granite plinth, within a white stone surround. The names of the dead are on a roll buried in the plinth. GWR chairman Viscount Churchill unveiled the memorial on 11 November 1922 in front of over 6,000 people, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, GWR officials, and relatives of the dead. When public gatherings were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic, local communities on the GWR network laid wreaths on trains that carried them to Paddington to be laid at the memorial for Armistice Day. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

Did you know ...

Antiparallelogram

... that an antiparallelogram (example pictured) is a crossed quadrilateral with two pairs of equal-length edges?
... that footballer Chris Hussey studied part-time to gain a first-class honours degree after overcoming anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorders?
... that a reviewer once withheld top marks for play-by-mail game Midgard because of a negative experience with a gamemaster?
... that the Umayyad prince Abd al-Malik ibn Umar ibn Marwan sealed the submission of western al-Andalus to the Emirate of Córdoba?
... that in its final years, Mississippi radio station WKXG allegedly attempted to maintain its broadcast license by "taking turns" with another station in their transmitter facility?
... that Jean-Claude Corbeil was credited with having "de-anglicized Quebec" during his time as linguistic director of the province's language police?
... that the special designation of the 623rd Field Artillery Regiment is being reviewed as it refers to Confederate general John Hunt Morgan?
... that the private members' club George has a bespoke menu for pet dogs?

In the news

Cyclone Batsirai

Cyclone Batsirai (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing at least 112,000 people and leaving more than 100 others dead.
In association football, the Africa Cup of Nations concludes with Senegal defeating Egypt in the final.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.
Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi dies in a US military raid in Atme, Syria.

On this day

February 13

Covering of the Senne

1692 – Members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands were massacred, allegedly for failing to pledge allegiance to the new monarchs, William III and Mary II.
1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne (pictured), burying the polluted main river of Brussels to allow for urban renewal in the centre of the city.
1945 – World War II: The Allies began a strategic bombing of Dresden, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
1978 – A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the site of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, killing three people and injuring eleven others.
2012 – The first Vega rocket was launched by the European Space Agency.

Béla II of Hungary (d. 1141)
Sarojini Naidu (b. 1879)
Waylon Jennings (d. 2002)

More anniversaries:

Today's featured picture

In American football, a field goal (worth three points) is scored when a team place kicks or drop kicks the ball through the goal, i.e. between the uprights and over the crossbar, during a play from scrimmage. This photograph depicts Connor Barth of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers preparing to kick a field goal, with Jake Schum acting as the holder, during a 2015 National Football League military-appreciation game against the New York Giants at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Photograph credit: Ned T. Johnston

Recently featured:

Other areas of Wikipedia

Community portal – Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas.
Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia.
Reference desk – Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects.
Site news – Announcements, updates, articles and press releases on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Teahouse – To ask your first basic questions about contributing to Wikipedia.
Village pump – For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies.

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:

Commons
Free media repository
MediaWiki
Wiki software development
Meta-Wiki
Wikimedia project coordination
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikispecies
Directory of species
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

Wikipedia languages

This Wikipedia is written in English. Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.

1,000,000+ articles
- العربية
- Deutsch
- Español
- Français
- Italiano
- Nederlands
- 日本語
- Polski
- Português
- Русский
- Svenska
- Українська
- Tiếng Việt
- 中文
250,000+ articles
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Bahasa Melayu
- Bân-lâm-gú
- Български
- Català
- Čeština
- Dansk
- Esperanto
- Euskara
- فارسی‎
- עברית
- 한국어
- Magyar
- Norsk Bokmål
- Română
- Srpski
- Srpskohrvatski
- Suomi
- Türkçe
50,000+ articles