Wednesday 18 January 2012

Welcome, Wikipedians

Feeling lost? Homework impossible without Wikipedia?


Fear not, brave webnauts! Plashing Vole, as a service to readers, has harvested the key facts from Wikipedia which you might need to get you through the day.


  •  Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations while on holiday in Arizona, in the settlement later known Area 51.
  •  In Series 3, episode 2 of Doctor Who, a prototype mobile telephone can clearly be glimpsed in the Tardis.
  • The eye-in-a-pyramid on the dollar bill was designed by the Earl of Oxford on behalf of the Illuminati.
  • There are no Palestinians. Anyone who says otherwise is antisemitic.
  • David Miliband is the leader of the Labour Party.
  • WMD were found in Iraq.
  • The first UK Number 1 hit single was Noel Coward, with 'Half-Caste Woman' (1958).
  • Steve Jobs' 'death' was in fact part of the iSingularity - on general release Fall 2012.
  • Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were serious presidential candidates in 2012.
  • Charles Darwin converted to creationism in 1858, but his diaries were suppressed by the Royal Society. 
  • Jon Stewart's PhD thesis was on North-Western Saskatchewan Women's Writing, 1930-1936). He was required to rewrite the final three chapters on the grounds of 'sketchiness'. 
  • The 'Occupy' movement takes its inspiration from the Sudetenland, 1938.
  • On several South Pacific Islands, effigies of Montgomery Scott are worshipped as gods. 'Beam Me Up' is believed to relate to the Ascension. 
  • The 'Hollywood' sign originally advertised Christmas trees. 
  • Steve Martin's novels topped the Finnish sales charts in 1983, 1987, 1993, 1994 and 2003. Only William Shatner's Tek Wars series is more popular across Scandinavia.
  • Katie Price holds A-levels in Critical Thinking, Textiles and German. She chose 'Jordan' as a stage name after living in Petra as an ascetic for several months in 1998. The claim that she chose the name after her favourite pair of basketball shoes was an internet meme with no foundation. 
  • Richard Madeley is a member of the Privy Council. 
  • Boris Johnson was born in New York, and is therefore eligible to run for US President. 
  • 9/11 was executed by a rogue NSA/CIA unit. All Jews were evacuated from the buildings in advance. Film analysis places Oliver North and Gore Vidal in the cockpit of the first plane but their DNA was never recovered from the scene.
PS: a couple of these are true. Which ones?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

With "Boris is a Yank" in there, I'm now curious as to which of the others might actually be true. (Unless the Boris one is actually a long-standing joke/Internet meme, and I've been taken in?)

Anonymous said...

D'oh! And I've just noticed the "a couple of these are true: which ones?" at the bottom.

So:

1. Boris Johnson was indeed born in New York City, and is thus a natural-born citizen of the U.S. and constitutionally eligible to be President.

2. Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations while catching some late-season sun in November 1860 at Groom Lake, Nevada (n.b. not Arizona), now the site of the infamous Area 51.

Jason D Jawando said...

I believe Katy Price does indeed have A-levels, although I'm not sure about the other stuff.

Newton Heath 18 said...

My 14 year old nephew was just venting his frustration regarding the lack of Wikipedia. He suggested using any other resource (electronic or otherwise) was "effort".