Datasets:

wikimedia
/

wiki-dyk

license: cc-by-sa-4.0
pretty_name: Wikipedia "Did You Know" Archive
language:
  - en
  - fr
  - de
multilinguality:
  - multilingual
task_categories:
  - text-generation
  - question-answering
annotations_creators:
  - crowdsourced
language_creators:
  - crowdsourced
source_datasets:
  - original
size_categories:
  - 100K<n<1M
tags:
  - wikipedia
  - did-you-know
  - trivia
  - encyclopedic
configs:
  - config_name: en
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: en/dyk-en.parquet
  - config_name: fr
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: fr/dyk-fr.parquet
  - config_name: de
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: de/dyk-de.parquet

Wikipedia "Did You Know" Archive

Structured data curated from the "Did you know" (DYK) snippets Wikipedia communities feature on the Main Page — the short, sourced "... that X?" facts. In DYK parlance each such fact is a hook; this dataset holds one record per hook occurrence, enriched with the articles the hook links to.

Config	Language	Rows	DYK section
`en`	English	117,342	Did you know ...
`fr`	French	12,011	Le saviez-vous ?
`de`	German	14,354	Schon gewusst?

The schema is identical across languages (language-specific absences are null), so the configs can be mixed or compared directly.

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

en = load_dataset("wikimedia/wiki-dyk", "en", split="train")
print(en[0]["content_body"])

Data fields

One record per hook occurrence:

Field	Type	Description
`language`	string	Wiki language code (`en`, `fr`, `de`).
`archive_page`	string	Source archive page the hook was read from.
`day`	date	Date the hook appeared on the Main Page. `null` where the archive does not record it (French before 2017).
`set_time`	timestamp (UTC)	Set-removal timestamp where the archive records one (English from 2008); `null` elsewhere.
`hook_wikitext`	string	Raw wikitext of the hook, for re-rendering or re-analysis.
`content_body`	string	Reader HTML rendered locally from the wikitext (bold, italic, links).
`linked_pages`	list	Articles the hook links to, enriched (see below).

Each entry in linked_pages:

Field	Type	Description
`page_id`	int64	Page id of the canonical (redirect-resolved) target; `null` if the article was later deleted.
`rev_id`	int64	Revision current on the DYK date — historically accurate and reproducible.
`page_title`	string	Canonical target title (redirects resolved), not the link text.
`short_description`	string	Short description (local on enwiki, Wikidata-backed elsewhere); `null` if none.
`page_image`	string	The article's free page image filename; `null` if none.
`wikidata_qid`	string	The article's Wikidata item (e.g. `Q42`).
`article_topics`	list<struct{qid:int64, title:string}>	Topic categories from the topictrends service; `qid` is the topic's Wikidata item (stable cross-language key), `title` its localized name. `null` when unavailable.
`prominent`	bool	The featured article(s) of the hook — the bold link(s) on wikis with a bolding convention.

Example record

{
  "language": "en",
  "archive_page": "Wikipedia:Did you know archive/2026/July",
  "day": "2026-07-08",
  "set_time": "2026-07-08T00:00:00Z",
  "hook_wikitext": "* ... that '''[[Iron Bridge, Lucknow|one of the earliest iron bridges in India]]''' ''(pictured)'' was ...?",
  "content_body": "... that <b><a href=\"./Iron_Bridge,_Lucknow\">one of the earliest iron bridges in India</a></b> <i>(pictured)</i> was ...?",
  "linked_pages": [
    {
      "page_id": 12345,
      "rev_id": 67890,
      "page_title": "Iron Bridge, Lucknow",
      "short_description": "Bridge in Uttar Pradesh, India",
      "page_image": "Iron_bridge_Lucknow.jpg",
      "wikidata_qid": "Q130206787",
      "article_topics": [{ "qid": 9079095, "title": "Bridges_in_India" }],
      "prominent": true
    }
  ]
}

How it was built

DYK archive pages are fetched as raw wikitext and parsed per-language; content_body is rendered locally from the parse tree (no HTML API). Linked pages are enriched via each wiki's action API: canonical title and page id (redirects resolved), the revision current on the DYK date, short description, free page image, Wikidata item, plus topic categories from the topictrends service. A hook appearing across multiple days or sets yields one record per occurrence.

Source code: https://github.com/santhoshtr/dyk-archive/

License and attribution

This dataset is derived from Wikipedia article and archive text, which is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 (also available under the GFDL). The dataset is distributed under the same terms.

Attribution is to the Wikipedia contributors of each source wiki (en, fr, de). Per CC BY-SA, reuse must credit Wikipedia and share adaptations under a compatible license. page_title, rev_id, and archive_page let any fact be traced back to its exact source revision.

Limitations

Coverage follows each wiki's archive completeness; months with no archive page are simply absent (normal gaps, not errors).
content_body is a faithful local rendering, but unusual templates in old eras may render as raw wikitext in rare cases.
day and set_time are null where the archive format never recorded them.