Essay: "Things That Shouldn't Work But Do"

My first experience with Wikipedia was when I was doing research for a novel about seven or eight years ago. I was looking for information on the Cleveland Street scandal, a late Nineteenth Century brou-ha-ha where the head of the Prince of Wales' stables had fled England in order to avoid allegations he was a regular patron of a homsexual brothel. Interesting stuff, I thought, only I wasn't good at research and I couldn't find anything in the library beyond vague references that assumed I knew the whole story. Frustrated, I just tried googling it one day and lo and behold, an article on the subject popped up, with the complete story and footnotes and everything, provided by a website I'd never heard of before: Wikipedia.

Essay: "That One May Smile and Smile"

When Christopher Waltz won the Oscar for best supporting actor, it marked the second year in a row the award went to a "smiling villain" (after Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight).