2006: The millionth entry in the English-language Wikipedia is created. Since the entries for “million,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Million Man March” had been built up in the early years of the collaborative encyclopedia, the honor went decidedly non-eponymously to the Jordanhill railway station in Glasgow, Scotland.
Created by user Nach0king, the entry describes the train depot as “eleven minutes' journey time from Glasgow Central” and as having two platforms. (In his user profile on the site, Nach0king admits this topic is “hardly the stuff of world-changing articles.”) To its credit, the Jordanhill railway station, according to Wikipedia, has had relatively few train-related accidents.
The obscurity of the millionth topic did not go unnoticed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who said in a press release marking the milestone: "We are thrilled that our millionth article in English is about the Jordanhill railway station. This is not something which would appear in a traditional encyclopedia, and it shows how Wikipedia reflects the needs and interests of people everywhere, and not just the dictates of what academics and cultural mavens claim is worthy of an encyclopedia."
Launching in January 2001, the volunteer-powered Wikipedia -- a portmanteau of wiki, the Hawaiian word for "quick," and encyclopedia -- took a little over five years to tally one million articles in English. Wikipedia went and doubled this number just a year and a half later (the two-millionth being El Hormiguero -- “The Anthill” -- a Spanish TV show that is home to a pair of puppet ants who tally just three teeth between them). As of today, the encyclopedia boasts some 3.9 million topics. Wikipedia as a whole, written in nearly 300 languages, consists of 20 million entries.
Source: Wikipedia, naturally
