Reading (and maybe blogging/podcasting about!) 25 Random Wikipedia Articles!

[Dan Q]

Wikipedia turned 25 years old this year and launched a challenge to readers: to read 25 different articles on 25 consecutive days.

I figured I could do one better than that and decided that I'd read a random Wikipedia article each day and - if it was a good one (and time-permitting) I'd write a blog post and possibly make a podcast episode about what I learned that day!

Today's random article was Governor-General of the Philippines, which looked a bit dull and dry until I spotted that one name in the list, Wesley Merritt, only held the office for a hair over two weeks, so I started reading about him, and from there I learned a lot about Spanish-American politics of the late 19th century, and the Battle of Manilla, and all kinds of other things.

So: here's the first blog post (and podcast episode) in what'll hopefully be an interesting series of up-to 25-Wikipedia-deep-dives!

If you want to follow-along:

- all the articles will appear here: https://danq.me/tag/wikipedia-at-25/ (RSS feed)
- the audio episodes will appear in my podcast as normal (which necessarily has an RSS feed because that's what a podcast is, but it's also syndicated to all the usual places if you prefer to use an "app"!)
- and of course they're all part of my wider blog (which has a high-traffic multiple-posts-per-day RSS feed but it's possible to filter down to just an RSS feed of just the "articles" if you don't want to know everything I get up to!)

(in case it's not obvious, I love RSS feeds; I'm even part of a super-secret club of people who hide "RSS-exclusive" content in their feeds sometimes...)

Anyway! I hope you'll agree this is an interesting project and I hope you'll consider joining me as I work my way through it over the next 25 days!

[Dan Q]

Dropped a second blog post and podcast today, this time about rail transport in Indonesia, which I learned a lot about!