Sally Ride saw 51x more Wikipedia readers than usual

What this article is

Sally Kristen Ride was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Southern California, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983, became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Sally Ride", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 37 edits to this article on 2026-05-26, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• Early life
• In popular culture
• After NASA
• Awards and honors
• STS-41-G
• Selected works

What changed that day

The article grew by 4,760 characters that day. The largest single addition was 4,734 characters. See everything that changed on 2026-05-26 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.