Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia is one of the most visited websites in the world and although it has several editions (based on language), the English one is the most popular.
2017 was an eventful year and with it, Wikipedia decided to release their annual Top 50 report for the English version. This report shows the various topics people searched on the repository for 2017 and it is not surprising at all.
If you check the entire list, you will notice that the most read articles on Wikipedia are centered around celebrities, movies and of course Bitcoin.
According to Wikipedia, the most read article was the full list of Celebrity Deaths in 2017. This article has been read over 37 million times and it is thanks to high profile celebrity deaths.
Number 2 on the list is Donald Trump and it is not surprising at all. Donald Trump got over 29 million views last year during the first year of his Presidency and it is thanks to his controversial policies and his diplomatic incidents on Twitter. Apparently he pulled in 75 million views in 2016, which is significantly less than what we see here, but still manages to be towards the top in this list.
Surprisingly, Queen Elizabeth II is third on the list with over 19 million views to her name and it could be thanks to the release of the Netflix TV show The Crown.
Season 7 of the hit drama TV show Game of Thrones was 4th on the list with over 18 million hits. The season premiered on July 16th last year and ended on August 27th and at the time, it was dominating the social media talk after each episode.
Fifth on the list is the American actress, Meghan Markle who was recently engaged to Prince Harry and this has been popular on social media. This has led to people viewing her Wikipedia article almost 17 million times last year.
Although the rest of the list is dominated by celebrities, TV shows and movies, the most unique of all is the one on 9th place: Bitcoin. The posterchild of the cryptocurrency market had an epic year where it jumped from $1000 per Bitcoin to almost as high as $20,000 in December. Thanks to the hype around Bitcoin, it led to its Wikipedia article getting over 15 million hits during the year.
You can check the rest of the list here.
