It’s pretty amazing that Wikipedia exists at all, let alone that it has over 17.8 million articles in more than two hundred languages. Millions of people around the world use the free web-based encyclopedia daily, be it bloggers researching on a particular software, students working on their projects, teachers using it as an educational tool and the list goes on. Gradually, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit has become a household name. It’s not just its size or popularity, but also the way Wikipedia has evolved that makes it simple. Thousands of Web users volunteer their time and knowledge to help fulfill the community’s goal of providing every person in the world with a high-quality encyclopedia in their native language.

The non-commercial online encyclopedia which was launched on January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, has just surpassed the 10 million registered users mark, hitting a milestone. One of the world’s most visited sites on the Web, Wikipedia represents the future of publishing, and every company that produces information – from publishers to data providers – should be scared.

Here, we round up this year’s “Top 100 Most Visited Pages on Wikipedia”, according to statistics from Wikistics, a site which grabs data from Wikimedia Squid access-log stream and ranks them based on the number of visits. I was rather dismayed by the results. Surprisingly, what exactly people are looking for on Wikipedia is actually Wiki! Besides that, I didn’t know that people love reading the “obituaries”. ‘Deaths in 2009‘ was ranked #8, with close to 50,000 visits.

The King of Pop made it to the #3 placing and United States President Barack Obama was one of the most-viewed topics (#7). Social websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were ranked #5. #10 and #13 respectively.

1. Wiki (131,383 page hits per day)

2. The Beatles (111,896)

3. Michael Jackson (79,734)

4. Favicon.ico (78,077)

5. YouTube (72,318)

6. Wikipedia (52,542)

7. Barack Obama (49,401)

8. Deaths in 2009 (48,758)

9. United States (46,545)

10. Facebook (42,679)

11. Current events portal [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events] (40,962)

12. World War II (29,736)

13. Twitter (28,511)

14. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (28,395)

15. Slumdog Millionaire (26,755)

16. Lil Wayne (26,210)

17. Adolf Hitler (25,481)

18. India (25,380)

19. Transformers 2 (24,842)

20. Scrubs (TV series) (24,758)

21. Sex (24,754)

22. Rhianna (24,670)

23. United Kingdom (24,300)

24. Abraham Lincoln (23,743)

25. Heroes (TV series) (23,569)

26. Watchmen (film) (23,544)

27. Lady GaGa (23,376)

28. Star Trek (film) (22,990)

29. 2009 Swine Flu outbreak (22,968)

30. Featured content portal (22,829)

31. Megan Fox (22,573)

32. Naruto (22,573)

33. Australia (22,544)

34. Canada (22,437)

35. World War I (22,307)

36. Vagina (22,295)

37. List of House episodes (21,950)

38. Japan (21,797)

39. Martin Luther King Jr (21,786)

40. Miley Cyrus (21,724)

41. Robert Pattinson (21,515)

42. Deadpool (comics) (21,264)

43. Twilight (2008 film) (21,158)

44. Windows 7 (21,018)

45. House (TV series) (20,882)

46. Terminator Salvation (20,743)

47. Kristen Stewart (20,538)

48. Internet Movie Database (20,422)

49. 2012 (20,347)

50. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (20,150)

51. Penis (20,076)

52. List of Presidents of the United States (19,884)

53. List of sex positions (19,876)

54. Masturbation (19,730)

55. William Shakespeare (19,714)

56. Farrah Fawcett (19,584)

57. Germany (19,514)

58. Swine flu (19,092)

59. Israel (19,077)

60. Google (19,070)

61. George W. Bush (18,964)

62. Global warming (18,809)

63. Wikipedia About Page (18,803)

64. New York City (18,251)

65. Tupac Shakur (18,186)

66. Taylor Swift (18,101)

67. Henry VIII of England (17,912)

68. Jade Goody (17,802)

69. Sexual intercourse (17,716)

70. The Notorious B.I.G. (17,572)

71. Human penis size (17,403)

72. 2009 in film (17,270)

73. Anal sex (17,052)

74. Twilight (novel) (17,040)

75. Natasha Richardson (17,001)

76. China (16,935)

77. American Idol (16,728)

78. MySpace (16,240)

79. France (16,198)

80. Metallica (16,110)

81. Relapse (album) (16,099)

82. List of Family Guy episodes (15,961)

83. Bleach (manga) (15,947)

84. Russia (15,674)

85. Mickey Rourke (15,616)

86. Jonas Brothers (15,561)

87. Vietnam War (15,306)

88. Kim Kardashian (15,213)

89. Lost (season 5) (15,107)

90. Selena Gomez (15,086)

91. Wolverine (comics) (15,062)

92. Family Guy (15,013)

93. Valentine’s Day (14,924)

94. Hotmail (14,880)

95. The Dark Knight (film) (14,782)

96. America’s Next Top Model (14,752)

97. Mexico (14,709)

98. Batman (14,654)

99. List of Heroes episodes (14,652)

100. Pornography (14,650)