The internet age is defined by the availability of information.  There are countless websites dedicated to presenting information on history, politics, technology, etc., but there are few websites that have done so on as large of a scale as Wikipedia.  Articles from Wikipedia are often the first result in search engines and is preferred by millions who need questions answered.  However, before there were millions of Wikipedia fans and submitters, there was simply an idea for a free online encyclopedia.

On this day, January 15th, in 2001, Wikipedia was officially launched.  Originally, the website was created as a project by Nupedia with the sole rule of volunteers providing non-biased content.  After ending 2001 with 20,000 articles, Wikipedia content would soon surge.  With increased popularity, Wikipedia would adopt more strict plagiarism and reference policies.  A decade later, Wikipedia would contain 20 million articles in 283 languages.

The founders of Wikipedia had a revolutionary dream of creating a free encyclopedia source, where users create content, but they most likely did not expect the phenomenon that would arise.  Although the free, user-submitted encyclopedia has sparked a lot of controversy, Wikipedia is still one of the world’s most well-known and highly visited sites.