Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/August 2 to 8, 2020

The Top 25 Report

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (August 2 to 8, 2020)

Prepared with commentary by Kingsif

⭠ Last week's report

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Mostly ammonium nitrate explosions (Beirut is destroyed), Bollywood suicides (yes, plural), and The Umbrella Academy (the much-anticipated second season arrived). Jeffrey Epstein is back, too (they love a good conspiracy theory).

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Lebanon	1,588,673	A small country beset by war and tragedy this week saw its capital city (#6) destroyed (#3) in a big explosion (#22) caused by incompetence (#5). Though not nuclear, the size and appearance of the mushroom cloud that resulted in earthquakes in mainland Europe has been likened to some notable bombings (#11).
2	The Umbrella Academy (TV series)	1,538,754	Season 2 of the mystery superhero drama arrived on Netflix. Ellen Page (pictured) stars in it as Vanya, who is doing a hell of a lot better than in season 1. Page is also from Canada, where the show is filmed, and according to co-star Emmy Raver-Lampman she would take other castmembers out to local places while filming. Another of their on-screen siblings is played by #18.
3	2020 Beirut explosions	1,207,762	Happened in Beirut (#6), capital of Lebanon (#1).
4	Shakuntala Devi	1,178,421	The subject of a new film from Amazon Prime. While Netflix is going action, Amazon has decided to go... math.
5	Ammonium nitrate	1,089,158	Ammonium nitrate is a highly unstable substance that has caused some big explosions, like #14 and #3, the latter of which turned Beirut, capital of #1, into rubble this week.
6	Beirut	961,178
7	Deaths in 2020	858,347	"Will you defeat them Your demons and all the non-believers? The plans that they have made? Because one day, I'll leave you A phantom to lead you in the summer To join the black parade"
8	Rhea Chakraborty	691,270	How's this for Bollywood drama: Chakraborty, the girlfriend of the late Sushant Singh Rajput (#17), was originally arrested last week for something related to his suicide, but is now being investigated for money laundering. In a shocking turn of events in this whole suicide scandal, Singh Rajput's best friend and fellow Bollywood star, Sharma, killed himself this week.
9	Samir Sharma	665,074
10	Wilford Brimley	618,624	A moderately famous actor and sometime singer, Brimley is also the person who caused half of North America to pronounce diabetes as "diabeetus" – he was diagnosed with the condition in the 1970s and became a prominent campaigner, but one with a mountain accent. He died on August 1 from what appears to be a diabetes-related kidney problem.
11	Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki	617,027	75 years ago this week, the Second World War was effectively ended when the big guns got pulled out. And by guns, I mean nukes. In current events, the recent explosion #3 has been compared to these.
12	Susan Rice	606,185	Rice's profile rose as a possible Joe Biden running mate.
13	The Umbrella Academy	561,502	A comic created by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance really couldn't have turned into anything but The Umbrella Academy, but the comic was not expected to turn into as much of a success as it did, leading to the popular Netflix series (#2) that had its second season release last week.
14	Texas City disaster	535,023	In April 1947, an ammonium nitrate explosion destroyed parts of Galveston, Texas, from offshore at the Port of Texas City. At the time it was compared to #11; this week it's compared to the much more similar #3.
15	Pizzagate conspiracy theory	522,423	This week, the conspiracy theorists genuinely got a Trolls doll removed from stores after Pizzagate 2 Electric Boogaloo: Trolls World Tour got started. Oh, yes, the placement of a sensor near the doll's crotch got the child sex ring rumors spinning again and spinning wild. How do you make a sustained argument about a government child sex trafficking cover-up from the design of a child's toy? An actual politician turned it into a debate about trying to make kids gay. There's an election in three months.
16	COVID-19 pandemic	493,638	This is still happening, and Wikipedia is still doing a great job covering it. Another resource with good coverage is the BBC, who this week had to tell people that, no, getting a COVID-19 test will not damage your brain. Getting the disease might.
17	Sushant Singh Rajput	461,900	Singh Rajput has barely been off this list since he killed himself, helped along by the posthumous release of a new film, a scandal about his girlfriend (#8) and, now, the suicide of his friend (#9).
18	Aidan Gallagher	431,495	The teenager in the cast of #2 actually plays the oldest character, 58-year-old Five Hargreeves. Gallagher was reportedly a fan of the comic (#13) before the show. He is possibly being searched more than his castmates due to his young age, or for some controversy that seems to come from apparently having no PR manager to take away his Instagram privileges when showing his immaturity.
19	TikTok	423,127	Trump signed an executive order to ban TikTok, because it's owned by a Chinese company and thus threatens cybersecurity... which is true. I just fact checked through The Guardian. Chinese companies are required to share whatever the Chinese government asks of them, TikTok records a lot more user data than most apps, and isn't securely coded enough to stop it getting at more data. But, it may not collect much more data than U.S. giants like Facebook, and analysts think that Trump's ban is political posturing to piss off China more than anything else. The two haven't been getting along, if you hadn't heard, and more countries have been coming to side with the U.S. in recent months (if by proxy through support of the UK's stance).
20	Alexander Hamilton	422,616	We get it, there's a musical about him.
21	Elon Musk	421,797	A few months ago Musk helped some people actually leave this planet, but the lucky few had to return this week. He also revealed more about his plans to colonize space, which are obviously crazy, and is still reeling from the last few weeks of actual nonsense he's been spouting.
22	Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions	419,268	Things explode without splitting the atom, most recently in Beirut (#3).
23	Jeffrey Epstein	413,411	Besides just being near or in the top 25 for a while, Epstein moves up because Lifetime announced they are making a new documentary about him. Great, that's just what TV needs to reopen.
24	Jonathan Swan	394,990	This Australian journalist (for Axios) celebrated his 35th birthday this week by becoming a meme. Yes, he grilled president Trump and gave a good enough confused-slash-disgusted reaction to be immortalized on the internet.
25	2020 World Snooker Championship	385,959	Sports are still happening: this snooker tournament began on July 31 and will end on August 16. It is happening in Yorkshire, England, in spite of the lockdown rules being made stricter there last week. It even had live audiences for a day...

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.