The 50 Craziest Lies in Wikipedia History

Since its launch on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has been the target of waves upon waves of criticism. At first most of it was warranted. The pages of the free online crowd-sourced encyclopedia contained a great number of factual errors, making it easy for established encyclopedia brands like Encyclopedia Britannica to throw shots. Teachers and professors forbade their students from using Wikipedia as a source in their work. The tide began to change, however, as Jimmy Wale's project grew, and the editing and contribution system he put in place, one which allowed anyone with some free time to lend a hand, became more refined. Independent studies began to show that Wikipedia's information was virtually as reliable as for-pay encyclopedias, giving credence to Wale's dream to provide all of the world's information for free to whoever wants it.

However, the same aspect that made Wikipedia so remarkable is the same reason why people still look at it with a side-eye. Because nearly anyone can contribute, we've seen numerous pages flooded with wrong information, derogatory slurs, and funny images. Wikipedia calls it vandalism. To combat this, the not-for-profit has taken measures such as permanently locking pages. We're sure you've heard of some cases of a celebrity—like, most recently, Rick Ross—being declared dead. There's a bunch more. We gathered the 50 craziest examples we could find for your enjoyment.

Compromised page: Canada Dry

Year: 2011

Not a lie per se, but visual falsehood. Which, if you think about it, is all the same. After hearing the thinly veiled shots thrown his way by Drake on Rick Ross's "Stay Schemin'", Common returned fire, calling the Toronto-native "Canada Dry". It was only a matter of time before someone changed the main image on the Canada Dry Wikipedia page to a photo of Drake. Dude just can't catch a break.

Compromised page: Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway

Year: N/A

We're not sure if the person who edited the Wikipedia page for Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, a book on Spanish bullfighting, was trying to be funny or was just hopelessly misinformed. Whatever the case, someone saw fit to describe the 1932 non-fiction book as one about the "ceremony and traditions of Spanish whores". The writer goes onto correctly explain how the book looks into the world of bullfighting. So what is it? Simple slip-up or intended slight? Who knows.

Compromised page: Princess Mabel of Oranje-Nassau

Year: 2003

For those in the public eye, a Wikipedia page is vital property for disseminating information. No one knows that better than the Dutch Royal family. When a Wikipedia entry stating that Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenede refused to approve the wedding of Prince Johan Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit due to "incomplete and false information" regarding her relationship with a known drug dealer was changed by someone in the royal family, it was changed to say that it was due to simply "incomplete information". It later came out that the Prince himself changed the Wikipedia page to better reflect his bride-to-be.

Compromised page: Ritchie De Laet, Professional soccer player

Year: 2009

Apparently, when Beglian footballer Ritchie De Laet was signed by Manchester United on a three-year performance-based deal, many fans weren't happy. Some fans took to the page of the former Stoke City defender to voice their displeasure: "The Belgian was surprisingly signed on a performance-based contract by Manchester United on January 8. Many thought it was a joke and Andrew Marshall has agreed to shoot himself if he ever makes a Premier League appearance for the Red Devils."

Compromised page: David Beckham, Pro soccer player

Year: 2006

When people mess up a Wikipedia page, it's usually a slight error or an attention grabbing stunt. This falls somewhere in the middle. Pro footballer David Beckham was puzzled when he checked his page in '07 and learned that someone wrote he was a not a successful British midfielder, but instead a "Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century." Maybe they meant another David Beckham?

Compromised page: Vernon Kay

Year: 2008

There's nothing worse than having to explain to friends and family that you're not dead. That's what British TV host Vernon Kay had to do after hackers took hold of his Wikipedia page and wrote that the former model drowned in a tragic yachting accident in Greece. The hack even went as far as to include details about his funeral.

Compromised page: The Black Eyed Peas

Year: 2011

We're not the biggest fans of the Black Eyed Peas, but we didn't think they're half-time performance at the 2011 Super Bowl was all that bad. The lit stage was cool, and the homogenous sea of dancers was a good touch. However, turns out there was a lot of people who thought the performance was "of inferior quality to a high school talent show." Well, damn.

Compromised page: Reality, The state of things as they actually exist.

Year: 2006

One of the wildest edits made by a Stephen Colbert fan was the one done to the Reality page. Whoever took the pleasure of altering Wiki's state of reality erased the entire article and left us with a shallow quip that probably sounded deep as it pinged around a heavily weeded brain: "Reality becomes a commodity". Right…

Compromised page: Gary Oldman, Actor

Year:2010

The most subtle edits are the most confounding. Whoever decided to amend the award-winning actor's page decided to only make a slight change in the form of an additional sentence proclaiming that the dude who played Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight was actually a giraffe. Some people have too much time on their hands.

Compromised page: Osama bin Laden

Year:2011

It's no secret that when U.S. troops barged into bin Laden's Pakistan hideout that a sizable porn stash was found in his room. But was it "10 hard drives, 110 usb sticks, and 5 computers" worth of porn? Nah, b. And with multiple wives how does anyone know dude was a chronic masturbator? Scratch that, though, the real falsity is the writer calling Osama a "top bloke".

41. Gardener-Turned-Sex Writer

Compromised page: Alan Titchmarsh, British TV personality

Year: 2009

Alan Tichmarsh is best known for being the former host of Ground Force, a British gardening show. So you can imagine how wild it was for people checking out his Wikipedia page to read that he was planning on releasing a guide to the Karma Sutra. We think someone got their hoes mixed up.

Compromised page: Room Temperature,

Year: N/A

All this time we thought room temperature was a general term to describe common indoor temperatures. Turns out you can't trust Google, either.

Compromised page: Collective Noun

Year:N/A

Well, yeah, learning about collective nouns isn't the most fun activity in the world, but, uh… aight, maybe this one isn't a lie. You got us.

Compromised page: Bernard Madoff, Former financier

Year: 2009

We wouldn't be surprised if one of Madoff's 4800 former clients decided to spruce up his Wikipedia entry with a little truth. Before Bernie was sentenced to 150 years for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, someone said what all of us were thinking. Props.

Compromised page: Batman, Caped Crusader

Year: 2007

This should be a part of the real Batman Wikipedia entry.

Compromised page: Plato

Year: 2007

We can only imagine the number of philosophy students that went to Wikipedia to write a paper on Plato only to find a page saying the ancient scholar was "an ancient hawaiian weather man and surfer, writer of cosmo girls, and founder of punaho, in Ancient Florida, the first institution of higher learning in the western world." We hope no one believed any of that to be true.

Compromised page: Tosh.0, Sketch show

Year: 2010

Like Stephen Colbert, Daniel Tosh, stand-up comedian and host of the Comedy Central sketch show, Tosh.0 dared his fans to go on Wikipedia and deface a Wikipedia page. Unlike Colbert, however, Tosh told his fans to mess up the page of his show. And they did. It got so crazy that Wikipedia locked the page before the end of the episode. Just what did his fans write? Check the image above. Then click here to read everything.

Compromised page: Joe Wilson, Republican politician

Year: 2010

Remember the congressman who screamed out "You lie!" while President Obama was delivering his health care speech back in 2009? No? Well, his name is Joe Wilson, a republican politician from South Carolina. After his outburst, which John McCain said was disrespectful, someone decided to tell the world about Mr. Wilson. It's a little hard to read but the last line of the first paragraph said, "He is a douchebag that called the President of the United States a liar on national television and has no respect for the office he holds." That sums it up quite nicely, we think.

Compromised page: Parkour, New-age training method
Year:2010
You know those commercials that show people jumping and off buildings and staircases or leaping up onto walls? That's called Parkour. According to Wikipedia, it's a training method developed by a Frenchman named David Belle. It looks to be an intensive workout, one that will sharpen the senses and tone muscles you never knew you would need to use. Or so we thought. According to one contributor, Parkour is "the physical practice of sucking nuts in both urban and rural settings."

Compromised page: NPA Theory

Year: 2007

Wikipedia has a strict rule against what it calls "vanity entries": articles created by a person or company about said person or company. It was on those grounds it decided to delete a page on NPA Theory, a theory developed by Dr. Anthony Benis which states human personalities consist of three traits: narcissism, perfectionism, and aggression. Wiki also has guidelines for academic notability which Banis's Theory didn't fit. Our problem, however, comes with the fact that Wiki deleted the entry all together. As Ars Technica pointed out years ago, Wikipedia is filled with trivial articles on topics that range from long-forgotten video games to TV shows that only had a pilot air.

Compromised page: Alan Mcilwraith

Year: 2006

Alan Mcilwraith proved that Wikipedia can make you famous. Realizing that he could create a page on a Wikipedia mirror site, Mcilwraith built an article for a British army officer, Captain Sir Alan Mcilwraith. The page featured an image of Mcilwraith in full military garb with the description saying that he "is best known for risking his own life to protect that of his men for his action he was awarded DSO." Not bad for a Dell customer service representative.

Compromised page: Village of Denshaw, UK town

Year: 2008

Chances are you've never heard of the Village of Denshaw, a quiet community located northeast of Manchester, England. However, if you read its Wikipedia page back in '08, you would have gotten the wrong picture of the quaint town. Hackers modified the village's page to say that it was home to "an obese popular of sun-starved, sheep hurling yokels with a brothel for a pub and a lingering tapeworm infection." The hackers didn't stop there. The Wiki page also said that the only reason people go to Denshaw is for the "competitive sports held in the village including rock rolling, cow shooting, and sheep hurling," but, they continued, many tourists no longer visit due to "the Ascariasis epidemic in 1998 which left most of the village seriously ill." Wow. Looks like someone had a really bad time on vacation.

Compromised page: iPod Touch, Media player

Year: 2007

SInce Apple released it in 2007, the iPod Touch has been a best-seller with over 60 million units sold. Given that statistic, it's hard to believe that when it first hit the scene people were slightly disappointed in what was considered an iPhone-lite. If you need any proof that people weren't overly smitten with Apple's touchscreen media player, look at this iPod Touch Wikipedia page from '08.

Compromised page: Stephen Colbert, George Washington, Elephants, and more

Year: 2006

During an episode of The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert went in on Wikipedia for "wikiality": the act of something being made up and becoming reality if enough people agree with the creator. To prove his point he logged into Wikipedia and changed George Washington's entry to reflect that the first president of the United States did not own slaves. Colbert then urged his viewers to do the same to the entry on elephants. His fines abided until Wikipedia locked down all articles on elephants and blocked Stephen Colbert from the site.

Compromised page: Traveling, basketball

Year:2007

Behold the work of a true UNC hater. A despiser of the Tar Heels is the only way to explain why someone would alter the "Traveling (basketball)" page and call out the dude who was the first freshman in college basketball history to be unanimously given 1st team All-ACC honors and had his North Carolina jersey retired. Pure, unadulterated hate.

Compromised page: Colton Orr, Professional hockey player

Year:2008

Most Wikipedia vandalism amounts to nothing more than a prank call. A quick hit; a flash of an insult. Then there's what happened to Colton Orr's Wikipedia page. This prankster opted to craft an entire backstory for the New York Rangers right winger replete with pre-game rituals (…He opts to sit in Rissmiller's locker room stall and chews tobacco, or what he calls "long conversations with Scotty Skoal.") and an origin story ("I was fuckin' born to play."). This is how is how a Wikipedia vandal should work.

Compromised page: Bill Gates, Microsoft Co-Founder

Year: 2006

Hate him or love him, William Henry Gates III is one of the most important men in history. Unfortunately more people tend to fall onto the hate side of that statement. If you needed proof all you had to do was check Gates's Wikipedia page back in 2006. You would have seen a press image of Gates with the addition of a set of poorly drawn devil horns and a Hitler mustache for good measure. More money, more problems.

Compromised page: Robbie Williams, TV Host

Year: 2006

With a successful career as part of the British pop group Take That, and then as a solo artist, Robbie Williams may have had 99 problems, but money was not one. Despite that, in 2006 his Wikipedia page was edited to note that the award-winning singer/songwriter was putting food on the table by "eating pet hamsters in and around Stoke". Yup, according to Wikipedia, the man who has sold over 70 million records was making ends meet by doing a one-man Fear Factor.

22. So That's How You Get Pink Eye?"

Compromised page: Conjunctivitis, Pink eye

Year: 2009

If you're a Judd Apatow fan, the above passage should sound familiar. If you're not, it probably sounds like a 12-year-old got access to the pink eye page. Still lost? Go rent Knocked Up.

Compromised page: Fuzzy Zoeller, Pro Golfer

Year: 2007

When his page fell victim to vandalism, former U.S. Open winner, Fuzzy Zoeller (Frank Urban Zoeller, Jr.) decided to track down the culprit as best he could. He discovered that the IP address from the user pointed to a Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami-based law firm. Still upset from his Wikipedia page reporting that he admitted to "polishing off a fifth of Jack Daniels after popping a handful of Vicodin pills", he decided to sue the law firm for slandering his name. We guess he wasn't trying to live that Charlie Sheen life.

Compromised page: George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States of America

Year:2007

Discuss. Oh, and if you get the hankering to go back and adjust W's Wikipedia page, don't. It's permanently locked.

Compromised page: Nancy Zimpher, Former University of Cincinnati President (

Year: 2008

We're not sure how Nancy Zimpher managed to upset a University of Cincinnati student so much that he or she took to her Wikipedia page and wrote that she was a "president/prostitute". Maybe it was her decision to end the school's midnight madness game: "Critics also claim that she doesn't care what alumni, boosters or students think. An example of this would be getting rid of midnight madness." The entry ends with Zimpher being called a "witch" that "flys around on a broomstick." That's it, let it all out.

Compromised page: Janis Joplin, Singer, songwriter

Year:2009

Inspired by an episode of 30 Rock where Jenna was to play Janis Joplin in a biopic. In the episode, Jenna says that she will employ "method" acting method so she will need to heavily research Joplin. Frank tells Jenna that she should research Joplin using Wikipedia. Jenna, of course, loves the idea. But before she's able to log on, Frank updates the Janis Joplin Wikipedia page with a bunch of lies including, "Janis Joplin speed walked everywhere and was afraid of toilets." Pretty clever, this.

Compromised page: Joseph Blatter, President of FIFA

Year: 2010

You know what's embarrassing? Being made fun of and not having the slightest clue as to why. That's what happened to Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, the head of FIFA. After a hacker amended his nickname with the word "Bellend", a British slang term for the tip of a penis, the South African government unknowingly refereed to him as such. So, yes, for that day his was being called Sepp Dick Tip Blatter. How nice.

Compromised page: Sinbad

Year: 2007

One Saturday in March of 2007, Sinbad's daughter called him to make sure he was OK because there was a rumor going around that he had passed away. A few days later more and more friends and family members began reaching out to the comedian to find out if the rumors of his death were true. Why did people think Sinbad was dead? Because his Wikipedia page said so. In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Sinbad humored, "Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again."

Compromised page: Miley Cyrus, Entertainer

Year: 2008

Miley Cyrus didn't have the best 2008. At least not on the Internet. Early in the year a hacker acquired risque photos of the Disney star from her email. Later, another hacker, and presumed Cyrus hater, created edited the Hannah Montana star's Wikipedia page to say she was killed in a car crash. The rumor, which originated on YouTube, spread like wild fire when it hit the social news site Digg.

Compromised page: John Boehner, Speak of the United States House of Representatives

Year:2010

Before he became the 61st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, John Boehner gave a spirited speech against President Obama's proposed health care plan. While applauded by conservatives, it had liberals up in arms. So much so that some left-leaning Wiki user thought it best to change the Speaker's name to something more fitting of how Democrats saw him.

Compromised page: Jonas Brothers, Pop group

Year: 2009

Look, we get it: Many of you find the Jonas Brothers to be a manufactured pop commodity with less gravitas and talent than other boy bands made of former Mickey Mouse Club members. But is that any reason to drag their name through the mud and say that the promise-ring promoting brothers got VDs? Yes? Oh, okay. As you were, then.

Compromised page: Esperanza Spalding

Year: 2011

Nearly everyone in attendance and watching from home was flabbergasted when Esperanza Spalding, the relatively unknown jazz singer/bassist, walked away with the 2011 Grammy award for Best New Artist. It's not just that she was the most unknown artist on the ballot, it's that she beat out Drake, Florence and the Machine, Mumford & Sons, and Justin Bieber for the honor. If you know anything about Bieber's legion of fans, you know they're rabid and pretty fucking crazy. True to form, Bieber Nation took to the Internet and attacked Spalding's Wikipedia page leaving a barrage of insults like, "Justin Bieber deserved it, go die in a hole. Who the heck are you anyway?" Where's the love?

Compromised page: Wikipedia

Year: 2001

According to its own Wikipedia page, the Wikipedia logo is "an unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces—some pieces are still missing at the top—inscribed with glyphs from many different writing systems." There's just one problem: some of these characters used in the logo are meaningless. The New York Times reported that two of the characters—one in Japanese and other in Devangari, the script used in Sanskirt and some modern Indian languages—were drawn incorrectly and are therefore meaningless. Wikipedia in 2009 decided to update the logo and correct those errors.

Compromised page: John Seigenthaler Sr.

Year: 2005

Back when Wikipedia was still vying for mainstream approval, this story of "Internet character assassination" became the center of a big media storm surrounding the free encyclopedia. Seigenthaler, a former journalist who served as an administrative assistant to President John F. Kennedy, was appalled when he learned his Wikipedia page listed him as a possible suspect in the assassination of both President Kennedy and his brother, Bobby. Looking to get to the bottom of the error, Seigenthaler, reached out to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales who in turn told him that he had no idea of knowing who really wrote the erroneous info in his Wikipedia entry.

Compromised page: Spongebob SquarePants, character

Year:2008

If you were to read the Wikipedia page for SpongeBob SquarePants back in October of 2008, you would have seen a lot of nonsense. First there were the multiple mentions of the cartoon character being a homosexual, even though creator Stephen Hillenberg denied it in 2002 saying that SpongeBob is asexual. Why people are discussing a cartoon sponge's sexuality is far beyond us. We digress. The Pineapple-dwelling children's star has been at the center of controversy for years, so seeing those homophobic quips weren't surprising. What was surprising was the edit that had Slim Shady as the voice behind SpongeBob. To go along with this poster's line of thinking, maybe he or she meant Ken Keniff?

Compromised page: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

Year: 2007

The error found on the Wikipedia page of Nancy Pelosi, the 60th Speaker of the House of Representatives was subtle when compared to others on this list, but still ridiculous. Reading the biography section of Pelosi's entry lead you to learn that she was of Italian descent, which is true, and that "Italians drink children's blood," which we shouldn't have to tell you is not true. Transylvania is in Romania.

Compromised page: Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder

Year: 2006

As one of the head dudes in charge at Google, Sergey Brin should have expected people to have some fun at his expense. And they did. In 2002, his Wikipedia page was edited to ask, "Is he lucky or smart or both?" That was nothing, however, compared to what was written on the page of the married father of one in 2006: "Sergey revealed that he is homosexual and dating with Jimmy Wales." You would think if he was really dating the Wikipedia founder, his page would be spotless.

Compromised page: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Year: 2006

Tony Blair wasn't the most popular man in Britain when he decided to align with the United States to invade Iraq. To voice their protest, hackers took to Blair's Wikipedia page and edited his biography to say that he had started "a false war against Saddam Hussein". Even worse was what was written about his childhood. The entry stated that Blair hung up "posters of Adolf Hitler on his bedroom wall as a teenager." Talk about taking things too far. Wikipedia took this act of vandalism seriously and launched a full investigation into its origins. Unfortunately, it wasn't able to come up with anything.

Compromised page: Blood libel

Year:2011

We all knew this was coming. As soon as Sarah Palin made a formal statement regarding the tragic shooting in Tuscon, Arizona and blamed journalists for "manufacturing a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn," America collectively sat back and waited for her to get blasted for the misuse of the phrase "blood libel". A phrase that's traditionally used to falsely accuse Jewish people of using baby blood to perform rituals. Not only did the news media, many Jewish advocacy groups, and other politicians go in on the governor-turned-personality, someone decided to post her photo under the "Antisemitism" banner on the blood libel Wikipedia page. To be fair, we don't believe Palin knew what blood libel meant so we don't think she's an anti-Semite. She's just not very bright.

Compromised page: Fidel Castro, President of Cuba
Year: 2007

After discovering that the Wikipedia page of Cuban President Fidel Castro stated that Castro is an "admitted transsexual", a group of volunteer Internet investigators working for the free encyclopedia decided to try and find out who exactly was behind the hack. They couldn't believe their eyes when they discovered that the computers used to make the change belonged to Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, the U.S. military unit that runs the Camp Delta permanent detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. That's right—the U.S. Military hacked Wikipedia.

Compromised page: Senator Robert Byrd

Year: 2009

When his good friend Ted Kennedy suffered his third seizure in two years at President Barack Obama's inauguration lunch, Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia felt so bad that he decided to leave the luncheon. Initial press reports had the then 91-year-old Byrd being removed for medical issues as well. Immediately after, his Wikipedia page was edited to say that he had died on January 20, 2009 after collapsing at the Obama lunch; none of which was true. Wiki's editors caught the mistake in four minutes and changed it back.

Compromised page: Rick Ross, Rapper

Year: 2011

On October 14, 2011 Rick Ross suffered two seizures. One occurred in the morning that left him unconscious. The other occurred later in the day while flying. The plane needed to be grounded and Ross was admitted to the emergency room at the University of Alabama Birmingham. Before it was confirmed that Ross was in stable condition, his Wikipedia page was edited to say that the MMG Boss had passed away.

Compromised page: Senator Edward Moore Kennedy

Year: 2009

On what was supposed to be a celebratory day, Senator Ted Kennedy suffered a serious seizure at the post-inauguration lunch for President Barack Obama. If that wasn't bad enough, early the next morning, the Wikipedia page of the legendary senator was edited to say that he was "removed in a wheelchair, and died shortly there after." To top it off the page was edited by someone with the user name "Gfdjklsdgiojksdkf". Luckily, other top Wikipedia editors caught the error within minutes of its posting and changed it.