CNN News Central anchors Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar wrapped up Tuesday’s episode with a look at the year’s top Wikipedia searches — and the number one pick was a rather depressing topic.
The popular online reference website released a list of the top 25 most viewed pages, and it was a list dominated by politics, sports, and entertainment. Overall, the English version of the crowdsourced encyclopedia “was viewed over 76 billion times globally this year as of October, according to the Wikimedia Foundation,” CNN reported.
“The most popular Wikipedia articles are a reflection of our world, highlighting our collective interests at a unique moment in time,” said Anusha Alikhan, the chief communications officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, in a statement provided to CNN.
At the end of Tuesday’s show, Sanchez and Keilar went through several searches on the list, including the 2020 U.S. presidential election at #13, Taylor Swift at #11, the Deadpool and Wolverine movie at #8, President-elect Donald Trump at #5, the Menendez brothers at #4, this year’s U.S. presidential election at #3, and Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at #2.
“Coming in at number one, with more than 44 million page views, “Deaths in 2024” topping the list — that’s not what I would have expected,” said Keilar, before introducing the upcoming show, The Lead with Jake Tapper.
“Solid note to end the show,” Sanchez remarked dryly.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the page listing a year’s deaths has ranked at the top of the list five times since 2015, when it first began tracking and releasing the data, and it’s always been ranked at least third.
The complete list of the top 25 most viewed Wikipedia pages of 2024, as reported by CNN:
1. Deaths in 2024, 44,440,344 pageviews
2. Kamala Harris, 28,960,278
3. 2024 United States presidential election, 27,910,346
4. Lyle and Erik Menendez, 26,126,811
5. Donald Trump, 25,293,855
6. Indian Premier League, 24,560,689
7. JD Vance, 23,303,160
8. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” 22,362,102
9. Project 2025, 19,741,623
10. 2024 Indian general election, 18,149,666
11. Taylor Swift, 17,089,827
12. ChatGPT, 16,595,350
13. 2020 United States presidential election, 16,351,730
14. 2024 Summer Olympics, 16,061,381
15. UEFA Euro 2024, 15,680,913
16. United States, 15,657,243
17. Elon Musk, 15,535,053
18. “Kalki 2898 AD,” 14,588,383
19. Joe Biden, 14,536,522
20. Cristiano Ronaldo, 13,698,372
21. Griselda Blanco, 13,491,792
22. Sean Combs, 13,112,437
23. “Dune: Part Two,” 12,788,834
24. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 12,375,410
25. Liam Payne, 12,087,141
Watch the clip above via CNN.
