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Summary: The real world is beginning to creep its way into the minds of users. As the speculations about the strike on Syria begin to look like reality, searches on the topic are beginning to outnumber those on celebrity misbehaviour. Not that they are being totally ignored, mind you. In the runup to the qualifiers for the 2014 Football World Cup in Rio, football also seems to be moving up the list, with two megabucks transfers triggering public speculation, and doubtless no little astonishment.
For the week of September 1 - 7, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Rank | Last | Wks | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | - | - | Lil Wayne | 662,661 | Apparently, apologising to your fans on Twitter can work wonders, as Lil Wayne has gone from not receiving any BET Award or MTV Video Music Award nominations to coming tops in Wikipedia views, a far more worthy honour. | ||
2 | - | - | Rosh Hashanah | 590,908 | That's the Jewish New Year to the rest of us. Jews the world over ushered in the year 5774 on September 4. | ||
3 | 4 | 35 | 580,025 | A perennially popular article | |||
4 | - | - | Mesut Özil | 532,862 | The German footballer was recently transferred to Arsenal FC for $67 million, which, for a presumed 5-year contract works out at roughly $1500 an hour. | ||
5 | 5 | 5 | Breaking Bad | 507,227 | The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11. | ||
6 | 1 | 2 | Twerking | 502,811 | The new term for girls waggling their bottoms onstage continues to be a point of interest. | ||
7 | 6 | 2 | Syria | 468,913 | The next potential Middle Eastern country in which the USA might embroil itself has, unsurprisingly, continued to be a topic of interest this week. | ||
8 | - | - | John Wisden | 398,834 | The star cricketer and creator of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack got a boost thanks to a Google Doodle on his 187th birthday on September 5. | ||
9 | - | - | Charlie Hunnam | 393,246 | The English actor and Sons of Anarchy star may not have wowed the English-speaking world in Pacific Rim but his casting as the title role of the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey has sent his popularity soaring. | ||
10 | - | - | Gareth Bale | 392,593 | The Welsh footballer was just signed by Real Madrid for a reported 100 million euros ($133 million), an even more astronomical sum than the above Mesut Özil. | ||
11 | - | - | David Frost | 388,037 | Venerable British broadcasting institution who memorably decamped the BBC for al-Jazeera in his later years died on 31 August. | ||
12 | - | - | Labor Day | 383,336 | The first Monday in September is the traditional end of the US summer season, and, for some people, the last time of the year it is in any way excusable to wear white. | ||
13 | 8 | 45 | Deaths in 2013 | List | 377,900 | The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. | |
14 | - | - | Dakota Johnson | 355,325 | The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson has been cast as the much put-upon female lead in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey alongside Charlie Hunnam (see #9 above) | ||
15 | 16 | 3 | Breaking Bad (season 5) | List | 331,746 | People will turn to this page to keep up with the show. | |
16 | - | - | Diana Nyad | 326,346 | On September 2, the 64-year-old swimmer became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. | ||
17 | 2 | 3 | Robin Thicke | 326,049 | The Blue-eyed soul singer and son of Alan Thicke is still very much in the news; his role in Miley Cyrus's stage shenanigans, his unseemly behaviour with a female fan and his recent new album have kept him in the public eye. | ||
18 | 11 | 16 | List of Bollywood films of 2013 | List | 326,006 | An established staple of the top 25. | |
19 | 22 | 4 | List of Breaking Bad episodes | List | 323,265 | As above, people want to keep up with this show. | |
20 | - | - | Tommy Morrison | 322,286 | This controversial former heavyweight boxing champion got a boost after his death from AIDS on September 1 | ||
21 | 19 | 2 | Syrian civil war | 320,460 | If your country is potentially to become involved in a protracted, seemingly insolvable conflict, it helps to know more about it, and with the entire English-speaking world potentially on the guest list, interest on the English-speaking Wikipedia is understandably high. | ||
22 | - | - | Sarin | 316,890 | The nerve gas is one of several chemical weapons believed to be among the arsenal of Bashar al-Assad. It probably got the most attention over the other more dangerous suspected agents due to the possibility that British companies might have sold Assad the precursors. | ||
23 | 12 | 33 | 316,484 | A perennially popular article. | |||
24 | 21 | 2 | Bashar al-Assad | 311,606 | The dictator of Syria is certainly in no mood to concede the civil war currently wracking his country. Whether he resorted to chemical weapons is still not known with certainty, but the possibility has certainly galvanized the situation somewhat. | ||
25 | - | - | Teachers' Day | 291,642 | This page arguably got a boost thanks to India's Teacher's Day on September 5 (A Google Doodle to celebrate China's Teacher's Day on September 10 occurred too late to be incorporated into this list). |