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Summary: Somewhat predictably, the birth of a new heir to the House of Windsor on 22 July led the English-speaking world to tug en masse its collective forelock and engage in an orgy of unrepentant, exhibitionist Monarchism. The Royals' dominance this week is particularly striking when one considers that the two largest English-speaking populations on Earth are the US and India; neither a country one would expect to eulogise the British royal yoke. In honour of this occasion, the Top 25 report will be assiduously employing British spelling and dating conventions. Cheers.
For the week of 20 to 27 July, 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 | - | - | Rosalind Franklin | 2,314,478 | The co-discoverer of DNA alongside Watson and Crick got a Google Doodle to celebrate her 93rd birthday on 25 July. It's nice to know that, even amid this gushing celebration of pre-natal entitlement, a woman can still be recognised for changing history through her own effort (even if she didn't get a Nobel Prize for it). | ||
2 | - | - | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | 790,630 | The baby-daddy of the day got the highest view count of his extended family, though nearly everyone got a look-in. | ||
3 | - | - | Elizabeth II | 694,842 | Still going strong after 61 years on the throne, no one can deny that the great-grandmother of the newly-minted bundle of joy (her third great-grandkid so far) has done an excellent job of symbolising her country for all that time. | ||
4 | - | - | Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge | 655,249 | That's Kate Middleton to the rest of us. You'd think she'd be higher, given that she did most of the work to bring about this situation. | ||
5 | - | - | Charles, Prince of Wales | 527,043 | The heir to the British throne (a.k.a the most thankless job ever) got some sympathy in accordance with his newly established granddad status. | ||
6 | - | - | Diana, Princess of Wales | 523,396 | The baby's late and still much-lamented granny (the word just doesn't fit, does it?) may also have drawn attention due to a biopic coming out this year. | ||
7 | 7 | 29 | 515,653 | A perennially popular article. | |||
8 | 14 | 2 | The Conjuring (film) | 506,204 | James Wan's latest ghost story (reportedly based on true events, take that as you will) stormed the US, taking $70 million in its first week. | ||
9 | - | - | The Wolverine (film) | 477,296 | The second attempt to give X-Men fan-favourite Wolverine his own franchise appears to be doing far better than the first, taking $21 million in its first day. | ||
10 | - | - | Dennis Farina | 453,466 | Likable actor of Manhunter, Get Shorty and Midnight Run fame got a decent sendoff from Wikipedians after his death on 22 July. | ||
11 | 2 | 3 | Shooting of Trayvon Martin | 405,473 | The debate over George Zimmerman's shooting of unarmed Trayvon Martin in February 2012, and its relevance to race relations in America and the validity of "stand your ground" laws, reached its climax on 13 July when a jury found Zimmerman not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. | ||
12 | 4 | 3 | Pacific Rim (film) | 397,822 | Guillermo del Toro's $190-million anime-inspired monsters vs. robots slugfest is not tracking well with the American mainstream, and now seems unlikely to crack $100 million domestically, but remains in its third week a strong talking point among Wikipedian cineastes. | ||
13 | - | - | Ultron | 394,314 | Marvel Comics cybernetic supervillain who sent movie fans scrambling for information when it was revealed he would be the villain in the upcoming Avengers sequel. | ||
14 | 6 | 3 | Milkha Singh | 379,897 | "The Flying Sikh", the record-breaking track and fielder who represented India in three Olympic Games, became a topic of interest after his biopic, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, was released on July 12. Singh sold the rights for ₹1 but insisted a share of the profits be given to a charitable trust. | ||
15 | 11 | 39 | Deaths in 2013 | List | 374,314 | The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article, even in a week as birth-obsessed as this one. | |
16 | - | - | Prince George of Cambridge | 368,049 | The bouncing baby bullseye of the brouhaha came in surprisingly low on the list, probably due to the constant name changes to his article. If the views for his article's various titles over the last 7 days are totted up, they would put little George in third place. | ||
17 | 11 | 2 | Orange Is the New Black | 353,761 | The women-in-prison TV series premiered in its entirety on Netflix on 11 July. | ||
18 | - | - | Prince Harry of Wales | 348,302 | The twinkle-eyed tot's helicoptering hellion uncle was also the recipient of a large number of views; one wonders what proportion were female. | ||
19 | 13 | 10 | List of Bollywood films of 2013 | List | 330,218 | An established staple of the top 25. | |
20 | - | - | Beanie Babies | 312,693 | This oddball mid-90s toy craze is probably back in the public eye due to a documentary circulating on the Internet, "Bankrupt By Beanies" about a family who spent over $100,000 on the toys, thinking their momentary inflated prices marked a sound investment, only to be left stranded when the Beanie Bubble burst. | ||
21 | 15 | 27 | 324,012 | A perennially popular article. | |||
22 | 9 | 2 | Bhaag Milkha Bhaag | 299,575 | Biopic of Indian athlete Milkha Singh (see #14 above) | ||
23 | - | - | Line of succession to the British throne | List | 292,470 | Unsurprisingly, this page has seen some attention, particularly after the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 outlawed the "male preference" in male-preference cognatic primogeniture. However, that law has yet to come into effect. | |
24 | - | - | Kathryn Johnston shooting | 284,341 | A Reddit thread about this unfortunate elderly woman, who was shot by plainclothes police officers who later attempted to frame her by planting drugs, led to a massive spike in views. | ||
25 | 21 | 38 | World War II | 284,103 | Another perennially popular article. (The 16th most popular article from 2010–12, in fact, see Table 2 here.) |
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article July 21 to 27, 2013, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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