Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 14 to 20, 2019

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga

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In space, no one can hear you report

What lies beneath Earth always intrigued man, even if actual people who walked outside this planet were only those involved with exorbitant expenditures to put a man on the Moon (#5, #7, #24). The prospect of life in other worlds moves our top entry, regarding plans to walk into an air base that supposedly housed alien corpses, and is present with the extraterrestrials in Marvel movies (#8, #10 - now top of #16!) and the beasts from the Upside Down in Stranger Things (#6, #20, #22). But Earth and humans is all we have so far, with all the sports (#2, #3, #13-15, #21), movies (#4, #17), music (#19) and wrestling (#23) possible available to make us forget of bad things such as death (#9, #11), crime (#18) and politics (#12, #25).

For the week of July 14 to 20, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	About
1	Area 51		2,826,689		On June 27, a funny fellow named Matty Roberts posted a gag post on Facebook: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us." He proposed that a flashmob of thousands of alien-hunters simultanously storm the walls of Area 51, the infamous Air Force base in Nevada that supposedly housed extraterrestrials, on 20 September. He meant it as a joke, but three million people have signaled their intent to take him up on it. The government already warned that whoever trespasses into armed forces territory is subject to arrest and persecution.
2	Novak Djokovic		1,832,087		Wimbledon's final was between two tennis legends, whose confrontations warrant their own article. After nearly five hours of play, with Federer nearly winning twice, his Serbian adversary won, marking his fifth title in the British grass.
3	Roger Federer		1,707,049
4	The Lion King (2019 film)		1,301,407		Out of Disney's tendency to remake its animated classics, The Lion King made the least sense: with no human characters, it effectively would just trade the 2D animation for the latest computer graphics. And with barely any changes to the plot, only adding short amounts of new content for the sake of padding the runtime to two hours, it is certainly the same movie again, only less inspired (the musical numbers suffered the most - what the hell did this movie do to "Be Prepared"?!), unlike what director Jon Favreau had previously done in The Jungle Book. Not that audiences cared, given this new Lion King made half a billion dollars in just a weekend.
5	Apollo 11		1,075,876		"If you believed they put a man on the Moon, man on the Moon..." Well, some stupid people claim otherwise, but on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 managed to land on Earth's satellite and fly back. 50 years later, this milestone of spaceflight is celebrated as returns to the Moon are planned, along with going to Mars.
6	Stranger Things		881,105		In-between two entries about humans leaving Earth in the 1960s, interdimensional monsters entering Earth in the 1980s.
7	Neil Armstrong		857,633		"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", said Armstrong as he left the Apollo 11's (#5) Lunar module - "The Eagle has landed"- and became the first man on the Moon. Armstrong, who died in 2012, was described as a "reluctant American hero", given he was a fairly reserved person, and continued to keep a low profile after his return to Earth.
8	Spider-Man: Far From Home		788,599		Peter Parker's ruined European vacation has gotten the approval of both reviewers and audiences, and managed to beat Spider-Man 3 as the highest-grossing solo movie of the Webhead.
9	Kyoto Animation		756,402		An arsonist set ablaze the studio responsible for animes such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, killing at least 34 people, injuring about the same amount of people, and destroying computers and materials.
10	Avengers: Endgame		753,872		In February, the Academy somehow passed over the Visual Effects of Avengers: Infinity War to award the story of our #7. Follow-up Endgame has since become the highest-grossing movie ever (#16), so the Oscar voters certainly have a chance at fixing this snub next year.
11	Deaths in 2019		741,769		"Yeah, you better seek out another road 'Cause this one has ended abrupt, oh-oh Say Hello 2 Heaven, heaven, heaven..."
12	Ilhan Omar		733,313		In the latest controversy raised by Donald Trump, the Tweeter-In-Chief started badmouthing four women in the House of Representatives who are Black, liberal and under 50, saying they should "go back to the places from which they came." The only one of those not born in the United States (from Somalia, which has been verily documented as an unsavory place), Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, said Trump was "stoking white nationalism" because he was "angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda", and used the same platform to respond with all the class absent from Trump and his supporters.
13	Cricket World Cup		729,190		For those who only think of cricket as being a loud bug, the popularity of the bat-and-ball sport's world championship in this report should be a learning experience. Even the tie-breaking method that gave a title to the English Team managed to score an entry.
14	2019 Cricket World Cup		700,162
15	Super Over		657,267
16	List of highest-grossing films		654,168		The Russo brothers (pictured) had already tied with James Cameron with having two $2 billion movies, and now they finally beat Cameron's Avatar to top this list with our #10. (in the meantime, another Disney movie, Aladdin, broke into the list, and our #8 is there as well)
17	Cats (musical)		652,349		In a reversal of the cartoon inspiration of our #5, a movie about felines adapted on Broadway, this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (fourth longest running show ever, directly behind... The Lion King!) is coming to the big screen, and the trailer wasn't well received by audiences, who claim the effects used for said cats is straight out of the uncanny valley.
18	Jeffrey Epstein		640,092		Already an arrested and registered sex offender for pedophilia in 2006, this financier, when returning stateside from his private island (which in a very indicative way, has been dubbed "Island of Sin"), was arrested on federal charges for sex trafficking of minors.
19	Freddie Mercury		621,414		Impressive how this iconic frontman managed to return. Helps that July 13 was the 34th anniversary of the Live Aid concert that is the climax of Freddie's biopic (a reason for said date to be known as "International Rock N' Roll Day"), a demo of an old song has been discovered, and Brian May has been singing the praises of his current Queen replacement Adam Lambert.
20	Stranger Things (season 3)		620,614		The latest season of the nostalgia scare trip that stands at #6, adding some Soviets and teen love drama to the interdimensional monsters. The Duffer Brothers (pictured) have stated that two more seasons might still follow.
21	Ben Stokes		615,111		The standout player of the England cricket team that won our #14, being named Player of the Match in the final.
22	Millie Bobby Brown		609,836		Two times Eleven, adequate number for the teen star of #6.
23	Extreme Rules (2019)		606,558		The latest wrestling pay-per-view, held in Philadelphia and headlined by Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch (pictured).
24	Buzz Aldrin		577,693		Normally, the second person to do something is relegated to a footnote. But the second man on the moon, Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, certainly escaped this - helps that unlike #7, he was not a recluse and kept himself in the public eye, down to punching an idiot who claimed Apollo 11 (#5) was a hoax.
25	Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez		539,365		The best known of those Black, young, liberal Congresswomen - including our #12 - Trump decided to target, even responsible for nicknaming them "The Squad".