Summary: The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
For the complete Top 25 report with analysis, see here.
For the week of June 23 to 29, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
| Rank | Article | Views | Image | Class | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yahoo! | 2,901,780 | .svg) |
|
Once considered moribund, the Internet company has been radically redesigning itself; purchasing Tumblr, dropping AltaVista and refocusing its attention on mobile applications. It seems to have worked; stock is up 50% on last year, and interest is high (this was the most viewed article on Wikipedia in over four months). |
| 2 | Antoni Gaudí | 1,154,577 |  |
|
The designer of the Sagrada Família cathedral got some posthumous recognition thanks to a Google Doodle on what would have been his 161st birthday. |
| 3 | Aaron Hernandez | 952,383 |  |
|
A football player for the New England Patriots who was arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd on June 26. |
| 4 | Edward Snowden | 814,450 |
|
The whistleblower of the NSA's domestic spying program has been denied a passport by the US government and remains in Terminal E of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, seeking asylum in Ecuador. Polls suggest Americans are still fairly divided on whether to treat this man as a hero or a traitor, which augurs more debate and, likely, more Wikipedia views in future. | |
| 5 | Nelson Mandela | 804,204 | .jpg) |
|
The 94-year-old former President of South Africa was rushed to hospital on June 8 amid serious worries about his health. His condition, described as critical, added poignancy to Barack Obama's visit to South Africa. |
| 6/7 | World War Z (film) and Man of Steel (film) |
683,510/ 659,271 |
 /
|
These two Hollywood films, despite each being out for more than a week, remain the only ones in Wikipedia's top 40. Conversely, Monsters University, which leads the current weekend and has already outgrossed World War Z by a wide margin, barely cracked the top 50, while the two latest releases, The Heat and White House Down, were both well outside the top 100. | |
| 8 | 570,110 | .JPG) |
|
A perennially popular article. | |
| 9 | Raanjhanaa | 529,383 |  |
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The Bollywood debut of award-winning Tamil actor Dhanush was released on June 21 and has already made back its ₹35 crore ($6 million) budget, no doubt aided by a score from internationally renowned composer A. R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) |
| 10 | The Last of Us | 514,965 |
|
This eagerly awaited and critically praised not-quite-zombie apocalypse video game was released on June 13. |
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