when did wikipedia launch

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined its name. a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia. It was only in the English language initially, but it quickly developed similar versions in other languages which differ in content and in editing practices. With 5,228,462 articles, English Wikipedia is the largest out of more than 290 versions of encyclopedias on Wikipedia. Overall, Wikipedia consists of more than 40 million articles in more than 250 different languages and as of February 2014, it had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.