Sweet dreams on Halloween: "It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break... Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August."
Summary: It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break. After 12 weeks, ISIS finally fell out of the top 25, while our more current obsession, Ebola, fell by 50%. Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 26 to November 1, 2014, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
A personal note: Halloween is my favourite holiday. Not because I'm morbid (though I am), but because it's the one holiday you can't kitsch to death. It's not really surprising that it came top this week. After months of real-life horror, it was time to revel in some that couldn't hurt us.
The world's reaction to Ebola has revealed just how distant we have become from devastating disease. In 1952, a polio outbreak in the US killed over three thousand people and permanently disabled another 21,000. That such numbers now seem horrifying is largely due to this man, who developed the vaccine that (for the developed world at least) relegated them to the back shelf of history. Thanks to a Google doodle to celebrate his 100th birthday, many more got to learn that history. Here's hoping it aids the UN's plan to finally send polio the way of smallpox.
Views have nearly doubled this week for this 2014 Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan (pictured), which stormed the Indian box office on Diwali weekend and has now grossed an astonishing Rs 3.4 billion ($55 million) worldwide in just 13 days, making it already the 6th highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time. The comedic caper movie tells the story of a motley crew entering a world dance competition to get close to a valuable trove of diamonds. It is difficult to imagine a more Bollywood plot than that.
Speaking as someone from Britain, can I say that guy has the coolest name ever? Anyhoo, this pitcher for the San Francisco Giants sent the Kansas City Royals packing at the World Series final by allowing just two hits in five innings.
Numbers are down by 50 percent after four straight weeks at number one, which means we may finally be recovering from our collective panic attack. Not that that has had much of an effect on our leaders, as the only news from this outbreak this week (aside of course, from the increasing death toll) has been North Korea banning all foreign tourists and a nurse already cleared of the virus challenging an arbitrary three-week quarantine. Quite the reaction to a virus that has so far killed 10, yes 10, people outside of its three-nation epicentre.
Ultron, a comic book villain in the Marvel Comics family, will be the subject of the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron, and played by James Spader (pictured). A week-early leak of the film's trailer propelled the article into the Top 10 last week, and it has yet to leave. Marvel cheekily blamedHydra, a fictional terrorist group in the Marvel universe, for the leak. One could question whether the leak was intentional and has already been added to the resume of some marketing guy at Marvel Studios.
You wouldn't want to be the guy who ran over and killed a Mob boss's son, even accidentally. But someone did, and, he was never heard from or seen again, as Redditfound out this week.
The country/pop singer Taylor Swift released her latest album on October 27, and also removed her singles from Spotify, taking a stand for her earnings. Weirdly though, she didn't remove her singles from YouTube, which charges even less than Spotify and allows pirated content to compete with her legitimate uploads.
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