The open-source online encyclopaedia quickly became the top site to visit to find out about anything and everything.
Millions of people across the world not only browse the site but also contribute and write articles.
This has led to the creation of a vast database of knowledge of a wide range of subjects.
‘Wiki’ is the Hawaiian word for quick and the site grows by around 800 articles a day.
To mark the anniversary, the site has revealed some of the key numbers around its rise as an online resource.
One
The number of languages, English, the site launched in. This rose to 18 by the end of its first year
290
The number of languages Wikipedia now says its articles are available in
85%
Percentage of articles in languages other than English
21
The number of years it would take for a person to read every single article (with no breaks!)
80,000
Volunteers around the world who edit and improve Wikipedia articles each month
15,000
Edits made to articles every hour
7,000
New articles created each day
36 million
Articles on Wikipedia today
374 million
Unique visitors to the website every month, as of September
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