The humble Glasgow building that was named as Wikipedia's one millionth article

For more than 20 years, Wikipedia has been the go-to corner of the internet for finding out information on everything from the phenotypic plasticity of Amazonian tree frogs to the annual passenger numbers for Glasgow's suburban railway stations.

But there's one Glasgow station in particular that enjoys a special footnote in the history of the popular online encyclopaedia for being the subject of its one millionth article: Jordanhill Railway Station.

On March 1, 2006, it was announced that the English version of the site had hit the one million mark with its entry for the West End station, created by Wikipedia contributor Ewan MacDonald.

READ MORE: Test your local history knowledge by taking our Glasgow Live nostalgia quiz

At 11pm that day, Ewan, better known on Wikipedia as Nach0king, posted a single sentence on Jordanhill Station - enough for it to achieve the site's much-vaunted milestone.

Suddenly, the humble Jordanhill Station, a transport hub all but unknown outside of a G postcode, was appearing in newspaper articles around the world, as Wikipedia, a website that was barely five years old at that point, hit the million mark.

The non-profit online encyclopaedia was started in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, who set an original target of reaching 100,000 articles, which would make it as large as the most comprehensive edition Encyclopaedia Britannica. Within just two years, the fast-growing Wikipedia had smashed that threshold and has continued to expand ever since.

Join Glasgow Live's WhatsApp community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages.

Commenting on his website reaching one million articles, Jimmy Wales said at the time: "We are thrilled that our millionth article in English is about the Jordanhill railway station.

"This is not something which would appear in a traditional encyclopaedia, and it shows how Wikipedia reflects the needs and interests of people everywhere, and not just the dictates of what academics and cultural mavens claim is worthy of an encyclopaedia."

Nowadays, Wikipedia remains hugely popular and influential. It is one of the most visited website in the world and easily the single largest source of encyclopaedic information on the world wide web.

There have been nearly 7 million articles on the English version of Wikipedia, but no matter how large the site gets or how many more records it breaks, Jordanhill Railway Station will always be article number one million.

You can read the Wikipedia entry for Jordan railway station here.

This article was originally published on 02/28/2023.

Sign up to our daily Glasgow Live newsletter here to receive news and features direct to your inbox