The English-language edition of Wikipedia was launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, as a free encyclopedia that anyone could edit. It began as a side project to Nupedia, an earlier encyclopedia written by experts and subject to a slow review process, and quickly outgrew it. Using wiki software, volunteers wrote and revised articles freely, and the number of articles passed a million in 2006. In 2003 the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation was set up to support the project. English Wikipedia is now the largest edition, with millions of articles, and has become one of the most visited websites in the world, although it has also drawn debate over reliability, bias and the balance of its contributors.
Before and after
- 2001Release of Google Earth
- 2001Creation of Visual Basic .NET
- 8 January 2001Construction of Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport
- 15 January 2001Release of Drupal
- 15 January 2001Release of English Wikipedia
- 15 January 2001Founding of Creative Commons
- 15 January 2001Wikipedia
- from 22 January 2001 to 13 August 20012001 insurgency in Macedonia
- 1 February 2001Release of VLC media player
More in Science & technology
- 1945Invention of computer
- 1964Discovery of rutherfordium
- 29 October 1969Invention of Internet
- 1971Email
- July 2000Discovery of livermorium
- 20 October 2004Creation of Ubuntu
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.