This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page.

Welcome to Wikipedia

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

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

Today's featured article...

A British Chariot manned torpedo

Operation Title was an unsuccessful 1942 Allied attack on the German battleship Tirpitz during World War II. The Allies considered Tirpitz to be a major threat to their shipping and after several Royal Air Force heavy bomber raids failed to inflict any damage it was decided to use Royal Navy midget submarines instead. Operation Title involved a pair of two-man British Chariot manned torpedoes which were transported to Norway on board a small boat named Arthur. Both Chariots were lost when bad weather caused them to detach from Arthur on 31 October. It was not possible for the Allied boat to reach the sea due to German security measures, and Arthur was scuttled. The Allied personnel attempted to escape overland and all but one reached neutral Sweden on 5 November. The other – a British serviceman – was taken prisoner by German forces and murdered on 19 January 1943. Tirpitz was eventually sunk by another bomber raid on 12 November 1944. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

On this day...

May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities

Statue of Valentinian II

392 – Roman emperor Valentinian II (pictured) was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, in present-day France.
1855 – Thieves stole 224 pounds (102 kg) of gold from a train travelling from London to Folkestone, England.
1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union Army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: The Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank after striking several mines off Port Arthur, China.
1916 – Jesse Washington, a teenage African-American farmhand, was lynched in Waco, Texas.

Hilary of Galeata (d. 558)
Emily Dickinson (d. 1886)
K. M. Cariappa (d. 1993)

More anniversaries:

In the news

Nemo

Switzerland, represented by Nemo (pictured) with "The Code", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
A series of solar storms impact Earth, creating aurorae seen farther from the poles than usual.
Former prime minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama is sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Mahamat Déby is declared the winner of the Chadian presidential election.
Flooding in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, leaves more than 140 people dead and at least 130 others missing.

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: