Welcome to Wikipedia

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

Almanac · Categories · FAQs · Glossaries · Lists · Overviews · Portals · Site news · Index

Today’s featured article…

The horned sungem (Heliactin bilophus) is a species of hummingbird native to Brazil, Bolivia and Suriname. It prefers open habitats such as savanna, grassland and garden, and expanded its range into southern Amazonas and Espírito Santo, probably due to deforestation. It is a small hummingbird with a long tail and a short, black bill. The sexes differ in appearance, with males having two shiny red, golden, and green feather "horns" above the eyes, a shiny blue head crest and a black throat with a pointed "beard". The female is plainer, with a brown or yellow–buff throat. It is a nomadic species, responding to the seasonal flowering of its food plants. If a flower's shape is unsuited to the bird's short bill, it may rob nectar through a hole at its base. It also eats small insects. Only the female builds the small cup nest, incubates the two white eggs, and rears the chicks. The species is currently classified as least concern, and its population is thought to be increasing. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

On this day…

May 9: Europe Day in the European Union; Liberation Day in the Channel Islands (1945)

Hotel Polen fire

1877 – An earthquake struck northern Chile, leading to the deaths of 2,385 people, mostly victims of the ensuing tsunami, as far away as Hawaii and Fiji.
1944 – World War II: The Japanese Take Ichi convoy arrived at Halmahera in the Dutch East Indies after losing many ships and thousands of troops to Allied attacks while attempting to carry two divisions of troops from China to New Guinea.
1977 – The Hotel Polen in Amsterdam was destroyed by fire (pictured), leaving 33 people dead.
1980 – Part of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida collapsed after a pier was struck by the MV Summit Venture, killing 35 people.
2001 – Police at the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra, Ghana, fired tear gas to quell unrest at a football match, leading to a stampede that killed 126 people.

Al-Adid (b. 1151)
John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair (d. 1747)
Yukiya Amano (b. 1947)

More anniversaries:

In the news…

Flooding in Porto Alegre

Flooding (pictured) in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, leaves more than 100 people dead and at least 130 others missing.
Kyren Wilson wins the World Snooker Championship.
In horse racing, Mystik Dan wins the Kentucky Derby.
Following the Solomon Islands general election, Jeremiah Manele becomes the prime minister.
Acting prime minister of Haiti Ariel Henry resigns, and the Transitional Presidential Council is sworn in.

Did you know?

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that the Roman de Fergus is the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to have survived from Scotland?
...that the Philharmonia Hungarica made the first complete recording of Haydn's symphonies, was an orchestra founded by Hungarian exiles and funded by the West German government during the Cold War?
...that the dachas of the Russian poets Boris Pasternak, Korney Chukovsky, and Bulat Okudzhava in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow are open to the public as memorial houses?
...that an aerosani is a type of air-powered, armoured snowmobile, which was used for transport, reconnaissance, and raiding by the Red Army in the Winter War and the Second World War?
...that a push–pull converter is a type of DC-to-DC converter that uses a transformer to step the voltage of a DC power supply?
...that the Chicana artist Yolanda Lopez became famous with the painting "Virgen de Guadalupe", which represents Lopez's personal investigation into Virgen de Guadalupe's status in Mexican society?

Archive – Start a new article

Wikipedia Community

There are many places within Wikipedia where Wikipedians work together and help each other. Well, that description includes just about every page! But there are some special places reserved for specific types of community involvement and assistance, and here they are:

The Community Portal — Involvement central. Find out what projects you can join and what activities are needed to develop and maintain Wikipedia.
The Reference Desk — Ask a question about any subject, just like at a library's reference desk.
The Help Desk — Come here if you are having trouble. Ask a question on how to use or edit Wikipedia.
The Village pump — The main discussion forums of Wikipedia.
The Signpost — Wikipedia's newspaper; where to get and post news about what's happening on this website.
Donations — This is what makes Wikipedia possible. Please give what you can. Thank you!

Wikipedia in other languages

You may read and edit articles in many different languages:

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 100,000 articles: Deutsch (German) · Français (French) · Italiano (Italian) · 日本語 (Japanese) · Nederlands (Dutch) · Polski (Polish) · Svenska (Swedish)

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 10,000 articles: العربية (Arabic) · Български (Bulgarian) · Català (Catalan) · Česky (Czech) · Dansk (Danish) · Eesti (Estonian) · Español (Spanish) · Esperanto · Galego (Galician) · עברית (Hebrew) · Hrvatski (Croatian) · Ido · Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) · 한국어 (Korean) · Lietuvių (Lithuanian) · Magyar (Hungarian) · Bahasa Melayu (Malay) · Norsk bokmål (Norwegian) · Norsk nynorsk (Norwegian) · Português (Portuguese) · Română (Romanian) · Русский (Russian) · Slovenčina (Slovak) · Slovenščina (Slovenian) · Српски (Serbian) · Suomi (Finnish) · Türkçe (Turkish) · Українська (Ukrainian) · 中文 (Chinese)

Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 1,000 articles:Alemannisch (Alemannic) · Afrikaans · Aragonés (Aragonese) · Asturianu (Asturian) · Bân-lâm-gú (Min Nan) · Беларуская (Belarusian) · Bosanski (Bosnian) · Brezhoneg (Breton) · Чăваш чěлхи (Chuvash) · Corsu (Corsican) · Cymraeg (Welsh) · Ελληνικά (Greek) · Euskara (Basque) · فارسی (Persian) · Føroyskt (Faroese) · Frysk (Western Frisian) · Gaeilge (Irish) · Gàidhlig (Scots Gaelic) · हिन्दी (Hindi) · Interlingua · Íslenska (Icelandic) · Basa Jawa (Javanese) · ქართული (Georgian) · ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) · Kurdî / كوردی (Kurdish) · Latina (Latin) · Latviešu (Latvian) · Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) · Limburgs (Limburgish) · Македонски (Macedonian) · मराठी (Marathi) · Napulitana (Neapolitan) · Occitan · Ирон (Ossetic) · Plattdüütsch (Low Saxon) · Scots · Sicilianu (Sicilian) · Simple English · Shqip (Albanian) · Srpskohrvatski/Српскохрватски (Serbo–Croatian) · Sugbuanon (Cebuano) · தமிழ் (Tamil) · Tagalog · ภาษาไทย (Thai) · Tatarça (Tatar) · తెలుగు (Telugu) · Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) · Walon (Walloon)

Complete list · Multilingual coordination · Start a Wikipedia in another language

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: