Noticed as I droppped into Wikipedia this morning. Does anyone know why Omar Khayyam is trending above John Wick, Keanu, The Avengers?

@JohnPhilpin I was wondering the same thing. You think it could be a feedback-loop issue? Like: he’d been trending somewhere in the top 10 or 20 for no particular reason, and enough people checked the article to see why he was trending that it climbed higher, causing more people to check the article to see why he was trending, and so on?

Theory #2 is that some pop-culture show alluded to him (like Big Bang Theory, or someone on Eurovision, or I dunno maybe Trump tweeted that he thinks “Omar Khayyam” is the name of some Iranian cabinet minister), so the hoi polloi scrambled to the Interwebs to find out who this Omar dude is.

@JohnPhilpin @rnv @vasta @nitinkhanna

Omar Khayyam (/kaɪˈjɑːm/; Persian: عمر خیّام‎ [oˈmæɾ xæjˈjɒːm]; 18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131)

(emphasis added) 🎂 عيد ملاد سعيد‮! That’s the kind of trending I can fall in line with!

@smokey Oops, apparently I needed to cancel the RLO or double-space my lines!

That’s the kind of trending I can fall in line with!

@smokey well that is interesting and good to know and is certainly a good explanation … thankyou ...

BUT

if I know that Omar Khayyam's birthday is on the 18th May ... I probably already know a lot more about him than the average bear ... so why am I going to Wikipedia to read about him?

Except of course the visitors are probably peeps that saw his name pop up in some ‘today’s birthday' list and thought ... ‘I wonder who he is ?’

In which case - good grief a lot of people must see and click through on those pages?

// @rnv @vasta @nitinkhanna

@JohnPhilpin Right, he was probably featured in the “On This Day” section of the home page; I bet the others were also featured somewhere on that page or were related to other articles that were. But, yes, that must drive oceans of traffic! // @rnv @vasta @nitinkhanna