This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

ha ha I love cranks with an axe to grind.

Ha, the guy who tracked him down is a notorious crank... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt

Wikipedia Watch is a website critical of Wikipedia. It is owned by Daniel Brandt, the leader of the Southwestern chapter of Aryan Nations and an Internet activist.

The first such article I read was published by Salon.com and can be found here (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/29/google_watch/print.html). This article isn't so bad as the others, the author does expose Brandt's motives:

Brandt is not a disinterested party; the dispute between Daniel Brandt and Google is personal. He has spent thousands of hours building a Web site that he believes is both useful and important, and Google, in its algorithmic blindness, has given Brandt a lower page rank than he thinks he's entitled to. Brandt finds it genuinely hard to believe -- and even personally insulting -- that Google won't give him more credit.

However the article does paint Mr. Brandt in a friendly light, and so it lends credibility to his cause - a cause which most if not all search engine professionals would regard as absurd.

The crux of Brandt's argument can be summed up with these paragraphs from the Salon.com article.

When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of .mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)

Why is a Nazi collecting people's names and citations?

One criticism of the Tribune Company is that they are responsible for the Cubs' perpetual losing. The Tribune Company discovered that the Cubs are more profitable fielding a poor team, rather than spending big on free agents. The Chicago Cubs are located in a trendy area of Chicago, causing them to have great attendance at home games, even when the team is doing poorly.

If the Tribune Company is so unhappy about this, why don't they just edit it?

ROFFLE

Plus, all the slang...

Track listing

1. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Cobain/Grohl/Novoselic) - 5:02
2. "In Bloom" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 4:15
3. "Come As You Are" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:39
4. "Breed" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:04
5. "Lithium" (Cobain) - 4:17
6. "Polly" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:56
7. "Territorial Pissings" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:23
8. "Drain You" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:44
9. "Lounge Act" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 2:37
10. "Stay Away" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:33
11. "On a Plain" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:17
12. "Something In The Way" (Cobain/Nirvana) - 3:51
13. "Endless, Nameless" (Hidden track) (Cobain/Hongro/Nirvana)

it appears to have been edited again, not by me:

"Endless, Nameless" (Hidden track) (Cobain/Hongro/Cuomo/Urkel/Nirvana)

Portions of the name sound like vulgarities in English and Spanish, leading to its use in various jokes. Titicaca is the lake that Cornholio, alter-ego of Beavis of MTV's animated series Beavis and Butt-head, claims to come from although he believes the lake is located in Nicaragua.

The word 'Trekdom' is used interchangeably with 'Fandom' when referring to Star Trek Fandom or their fans and has been in use by fans of Star Trek fans for several decades.

After the recent cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, the future of Trekdom is still uncertain, though it has been scaled back to its own core. Some may believe that Trekdom might die off, or it might be extinct at the onset of such conflicts such as World War III.

"Plus, all the slang..."
But shouldn't the 81 be called a 010?

Was what I found at the top of the page when I checked wikipedia a few weeks before starting a class on the Reformation.

First go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discontinued_gay_pornography_awards

Go to the Probe / Men in Video Awards section.

Click on the 1995 recipient of the "Best Bottom" award.

Note the expression on his face.

LOL

Cultural imperialism at its WTF-est:

Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão GCL (born José Alexandre Gusmão, on June 20, 1946) is a former freedom fighter who became the first President of East Timor since independence from Indonesia.
(...)
His nickname, "Xanana", is taken from the name of the 1970's rock and roll/comedy group Sha Na Na.

On a radio interview, Trina said that the relationship was more of a "brother-sister" relationship. Later, on Victoria's RapBasement, Lil Wayne said he knew nothing of the rumors. During Wayne's childhood, he mistakenly got thought of as a gay guy but late he dismissed all these claims by watching naked gun 33 and a third.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Wayne#Personal_life

And in the next chapter:

"Lil Wayne and Trina have recently ended their porno relationship, which was stated by Lil Wayne, himself, on BET's 106 and Park."

Did someone misspell "promo"?

The cartoon image has been there for more than a month:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black

(Phil) Hartman met comedian Paul Reubens while working with the group and the two became friends, often writing and working on material together. One such collaboration was the character of Pee-wee Herman and the script of the feature film Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Hartman also met Jon Lovitz while with The Groundlings. Hartman was fluent in German and a video circulated once of him doing a standup routine in the language.

Hartman worked part time as a graphic artist, including designing album covers for popular rock bands. Hartman's covers include:

* Steely Dan's 1977 album Aja
* Poco's 1978 album Legend
* Firesign Theatre's 1980 album Fighting Clowns
* Three album covers for the band America
* Crosby, Stills & Nash's logo.

holy shit

List of culinary nuts:

* Almond
* Beech
* Butternut
* Brazilnut
* Candlenut
* Cashew
* Chestnuts, including:
o Chinese Chestnut
o Malabar chestnut
o Sweet Chestnut
* Colocynth
* Cucurbita ficifolia
* Deez
* Filbert
* Hazelnut
* Hickory, including
o Pecan
o Shagbark Hickory
* Kola nut
* Macadamia
* Mamoncillo
* Maya nut
* Mongongo
* Oak acorns
* Ogbono nut
* Paradise nut
* Pili nut
* Pistachio
* Walnut

The Santa Ana winds (or Santana winds[citation needed]) are warm, dry winds that characteristically appear in Southern California weather during autumn and early winter.

accompanied by a typhoon of timbales and a low pressure system of congas

woo, deez nuts had me laughing out loud

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenzin_Gyatso%2C_14th_Dalai_Lama&diff=prev&oldid=165424870

(Rolf) Harris has played the didgeridoo on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, 1982's The Dreaming and 2005's Aerial. His biggest hit, however, was a gimmick-free rendering of the sentimental song "Two Little Boys" (1969), a departure for him in that he usually recorded either his own compositions or traditional songs. Harris also created one of his most famous roles in the 1960s, Jake the Peg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exploding_chicken&oldid=153643374

concerning William Huskisson, the first person to die in a railway accident:

A curious fact about Huskisson is that some years before his death, he narrowly escaped being killed when a horse fell on him during his honeymoon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Huskisson

Shortly after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the police received a letter in block capital letters:

I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the war – my patriotic feelings have made me decide this – later I will bring the Con Edison to justice – They will pay for their dastardly deeds ... F.P.

Mitsuyasu Maeno (前野 光保, Maeno Mitsuyasu; c.1947 – March 23, 1976) was a Japanese actor who appeared in roman porno films as Soichiro Maeno (前野 霜一郎, Maeno Sōichirō). Outside of acting, Maeno was associated with the Japanese ultranationalist movement. In March 1976, he carried out a suicide attack on Yoshio Kodama, a multi-millionaire right-wing leader and leading figure in the Lockheed bribery scandals. Maeno attempted to kill Kodama by flying a plane into his home, but Kodama survived uninjured.

This interpretation is more in keeping with the historical circumstances of Dylan's personal life and within the context the music he was making on Highway 61 Revisited. There is nothing sentimental or soft about this album. Every track is full of hard truths with little sense of forgiveness as is suggested by the more common interpretation of this song. Dylan has also apparently acknowledged being in the throes of heroin addiction near the time he was writing this material. He has written no other song which has characterized that experience and it would be an odd piece of omission that he would not have done so. This solves the problem when Gill calls this song "the least interesting track" on Highway 61.

In 2016, Skarsgård said that he had a vasectomy because he felt that eight children was enough.

You don't say?

The blue LEDs had to be wrapped in balloons after battery acid started leaking into Schwarzenegger's mouth.[3]

His father, at various times a police officer, clerk at Sheffield town hall, and chairman of the council's Health Committee,[5][6] was a former Roman Catholic priest,[4] the parish priest at St Joseph's at Shirebrook in Derbyshire,[7] who renounced the church and left the priesthood to cohabit with Hattersley's mother, Enid, a married woman at whose wedding he had officiated two weeks earlier

Pepsi, originally created in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and named "Brad's Drink," was first sold in his drugstore in New Bern, North Carolina.

Laughing thinking about ordering a Coke in a restaurant and the waiter responding "is Brad's Drink OK?"

No Coke, Brad's Drink

losing it over that

His father played the valve trombone in a small Italian band, and through him Meco got his first musical education.[1] Meco wanted to play the drums, but his father convinced him that the trombone was the right instrument, and at nine that was the instrument with which he was to stay. However, for Meco, the slide trombone was his choice, troublesome as it was for the small-statured boy to extend the slide fully at first.

lol beano-ass wikipedia entry

At Iowa, Williams studied alongside Raymond Carver, Ronald Verlin Cassill, Vance Bourjaily, and Richard Yates.[2] After graduating from Iowa, she married and moved to Florida, where she had a dog, a beach, and a Jaguar XK150. She wrote her first novel, State of Grace.

Her mother's family is Jewish and from New Jersey,[1] whereas her father's Texan family is not Jewish.[1]

Initially, the show was compared unfavorably to Saturday Night Live as a weak clone that resorted to shock humor for laughs. The third episode (original airdate: April 25, 1980) was the last episode to air on some affiliates due to objectionable content concerning zombie gore and cannibalism ("Diner of the Living Dead"), disgusting habits ("Women Who Spit"), and blasphemous humor ("The Inflatable Nun").[1]

you know, i'm fine with their lucio fulci riff and the one about fucking the blow-up doll of a nun, but _women who spit_? that one just goes too far. we're gonna have to pull the show from the air. we will be replacing it with syndicated rebroadcasts of the wholly unobjectionable WFLD Chicago children's show, the BJ and Dirty Dragon Show.

the wiki article goes on to note:

When Saturday Night Live's sixth season was met with negative reviews and low ratings over the new cast, new writers, and new showrunner Jean Doumanian, critics who once panned Fridays praised it, citing the show as being sharper, edgier and funnier than Saturday Night Live at the time.

gee, i wonder what could account for this sudden critical about-face. when season 5 of SNL was on, critics derided it as a pale imitation of the show. but when jean doumanian took over, critics started to praise it as being "sharper, edgier, and funnier".

the show goes on to describe sketches that were supposedly "sharper, edgier, and funnier", culminating in:

In what is considered the show's magnum opus, a 17-minute parody of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Ronald Reagan (John Roarke) as Tim Curry's Dr. Frank N. Furter creating the perfect Republican, who turns out to be a militant black man who leads Reagan's followers in a revolution.[1]

this sounds horrible. of course i am now downloading every episode of the show I can find because i am a masochist and i enjoy pain.

enjoy the Jamaican Chef sketches

Thunberg has met with many politicians and world leaders but said she could not think of a single politician who has impressed her.

Failed tracks

Besides Long Island–based musicians, the album also boasted a failed attempt to gain an unorthodox series of tracks. Apparently, they consisted of a cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley" by The Osmonds, "Love Is All Around" (The Theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), by Judas Priest, a cover of The Doors song "Roadhouse Blues" by Johann Sebastian Bach, "Jeremy Bendover" by Emerson, Lake & Curley, "Can't You See the Freebird, Jessica?" by The Marshall Skynyrd Band (evidently a duet between members of the Marshall Tucker Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd), and an untitled Medley that was supposedly recorded live at Hammerheads in 1980 by The Beatles.[4] (citation needed)

RIP Rex Reed

In February 2000, Reed was arrested for shoplifting after leaving a Tower Records in Manhattan with compact discs by Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae in his jacket pockets. Reed, who had just purchased two other CDs, says he forgot about the other three CDs and his offer to pay for them was refused. According to Reed, several days after the arrest, Peggy Lee sent him her entire catalog of CDs, because "she was so thrilled I wanted one of her CDs enough to put myself through so much hell".[46] The charges were later dropped

For his last meal, Feguer requested a single olive with the pit still in it. He told guards he hoped an olive tree would sprout from his grave "as a sign of peace".

I was reading about Wilhelm Reich and his orgone machines. I fucking died at this detail

Over the years the FDA interviewed physicians, Reich's students and his patients, asking about the orgone accumulators.[139] A professor at the University of Oregon who bought an accumulator told an FDA inspector that he knew the device was phony, but found it helpful because his wife sat quietly in it for four hours every day.[148]

Her manager, Frank M. Russell, ran away with her barrel, and most of her savings were used towards private detectives hired to find it. It was eventually located in Chicago, only to be stolen again by a new manager, William A. Banks

In late 1933 the local tennis courts were first opened in front of a crowd of about 100 players, a tournament was held the same afternoon. The local hospital also had an X-ray plant installed and commissioned a week later.[10]

Not Wikipedia, but I learn from The Cutting Room Floor's article on the obscure 1981 arcade game Dambusters that the high school table had a profanity filter.

"All of the entries in the word filter are backwards in the game's data. However, one glaring oversight as a possible result of this is that the game checks for NFORESKI, but it should be checking for FORESKIN. FORESKIN is not filtered out from the high scores table as a result, but NFORESKI is."

If only I could go back in time to 1981. I would be infamous.

Hitrino (Bulgarian: Хитрино, pronounced [ˈxitrino]) is a village in northeastern Bulgaria, part of Shumen Province. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Hitrino Municipality, which lies in the northwestern part of the province.
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2016 train accident
Main article: Hitrino train derailment

At 5:40 am local time (03:40 GMT), on 10 December 2016, 7 people were killed and 29 were injured following the explosion of a derailed tanker train. The train, which was carrying propane-butane and propylene, struck an electricity pylon, exploded and caught fire.[1] The fire engulfed at least fifty buildings,[2] one of which collapsed trapping some children.[3] 20 buildings in Hitrino were destroyed.

An evacuation of the village was ordered as 150 firefighters fought the blaze;[4] it was extinguished by midday.[5] The injured were taken to hospitals in Shumen and Varna.[3] Some of them sustained burns to 90% of their body.[1]

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, visited the village several hours after the blast.[6][7][8]
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Honours

Hitrino Ridge in Antarctica is named after the village.

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Hitrino Ridge (Bulgarian: рид Хитрино, ‘Rid Hitrino’ \'rid 'hi-tri-no\) is the rocky ridge extending 3.5 km in northwest-southeast direction and 2.8 km in northeast-southwest direction, rising to 805 m[1] between two southeastwards flowing tributaries to Flask Glacier in Aristotle Mountains on Oscar II Coast in Graham Land. The feature is named after the settlement of Hitrino in Northeastern Bulgaria.

They are the only father–son duo to both be punished by the NHL for biting other players.

"Baby, Now That I've Found You" is a song written by Tony Macaulay and John Macleod,[3] and performed by the Foundations. Part of the song was written in the same bar of a Soho tavern where Karl Marx is supposed to have written Das Kapital.[4]

Didn't Marx famously write Das Kapital in the British Library Reading Room? Guess he might have gone to the pub after and continued it there.

Or maybe Macaulay and Macleod wrote "Baby, Now That I've Found You" in the British Library Reading Room and that's where the confusion lies.

I did take at least a decade of intense research to compose "Baby, Now That I've Found You" tbf.

They are the only father–son duo to both be punished by the NHL for biting other players

proud to recognize who this was about

Bice was nicknamed "Bogart" as a newborn by his grandmother, "Granny Madge", because she thought he had "Humphrey Bogart eyes". His family continued to call him Bogart, but when Bice was in kindergarten he shortened it to "Bo" because he did not think Bogart was cool.

Other interpretations include "I am a pigeon",[23] "My toe bleeds, Betty",[24] and "I don't want to go".[25]

Domino's Pizza China has offered American-style potato bacon pizza, crayfish crispy-and-tender chicken pizza, durian pulp pizza, and salted egg-yolk pizza, as well as Sichuan pepper-flavor tender chicken drumsticks.

citation needed for “american style potato and bacon”

having a hard time parsing what "American-style" is specifically qualifying there

Classic American sauerkraut/caper/pineapple/ketchup combo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYuUet0gJ40

home made ipecac right there

Rio's World Cup Wind-Ups was a short hidden camera practical joke show hosted by English footballer Rio Ferdinand which was filmed shortly before the 2006 FIFA World Cup.[1] The show strongly resembled the American show Punk'd[citation needed] which is hosted and produced by Ashton Kutcher. Ferdinand chose certain English footballers to play a prank on. The pranks would usually end with the catchphrase — You got merked!.

It has traditionally often been claimed that only men could become noaidi and use the drum, but both Rijkuo-Maja of Arvidsjaur (1661–1757) as well as Anna Greta Matsdotter of Vapsten, known as Silbo-gåmmoe or Gammel-Silba (1794–1870), were both noted to have done so