Welcome to Wikipedia

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit

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

Today’s featured article…

Ursula K. Le Guin

"The Day Before the Revolution" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin (pictured). First published in Galaxy in August 1974, it was republished in Le Guin's The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975). Set in her fictional Hainish universe, the story has strong connections to her novel The Dispossessed (also 1974), and is sometimes referred to as a prologue to the novel. The story follows Odo, an aging anarchist, who over the course of a day relives memories of her life as an activist as she learns of plans for a general strike the next day. The strike is implied to be the start of the revolt leading to the idealized anarchist society based on Odo's teachings depicted in the novel. The story was critically well-received. It won the Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Short Story in 1975, and was also nominated for a Hugo Award. Multiple scholars commented that it represented a shift in Le Guin's writing toward non-linear narrative structures and works infused with feminism. (Full article...)

Recently featured:

On this day…

May 26: National Sorry Day in Australia; Independence Day in Georgia (1918), Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2024)

Damage to the Interstate 40 bridge

1644 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese and Spanish forces both claimed victory at the Battle of Montijo.
1894 – Germany's Emanuel Lasker defeated Wilhelm Steinitz to become the world chess champion, beginning a record 27-year reign.
1999 – Manchester United won the UEFA Champions League final to become the first English football club to win three major championships in the same season.
2002 – Barges being towed destroyed part of a bridge (aftermath pictured) near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, causing vehicles to fall into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.

Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604)
Yuan Xingqin (d. 926)
Jeremy Corbyn (b. 1949)
Elizabeth Peer (d. 1984)

More anniversaries:

In the news…

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian

A landslide in Papua New Guinea's Enga Province leaves hundreds of people missing.
The European Union passes the Artificial Intelligence Act, aiming to establish a regulatory and legal framework for AI.
A helicopter crash near Varzaqan, Iran, kills eight people, including President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (pictured).
In boxing, Oleksandr Usyk defeats Tyson Fury to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion in twenty-four years.

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: