Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Wellcome Library - Wikipedia

The Wellcome Library is founded on the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellcome_…

the history of medicine in a broad sense and included subjects such as alchemy or witchcraft, but also anthropology and ethnography. Since Henry Wellcome's death in 1936, the Wellcome Trust has been responsible for maintaining the Library's collection and funding its

acquisitions.

Wellcome's first major entry into the market took place at the auction of William Morris's library in 1898, where he was the biggest single purchaser, taking away about a third of the lots. His interests were truly international and the broad coverage of languages

and traditions is one of the library's strengths. Significant collections acquired during this early period included the library of Joseph Frank Payne, medical historian and librarian of the Royal College of Physicians, purchased in 1911, and the major part of the library of the

Munich historian Ernst Darmstaedter, bought in 1930.

Morris was heavily influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin, being particularly inspired by his chapter "On the Nature of Gothic Architecture" in the second volume of The Stones of Venice.

Ruskin had achieved

attention in Victorian society for championing the art of a group of painters who had emerged in London in 1848 calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

From May 2016 until October 2017, the Wellcome Library was host to a Wikimedian in residence, jointly supported by

Wikimedia UK. The residency's aims included improving the visibility and use of images from the Wellcome uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, training staff and visitors how to edit, and helping to improve medicine and history of medicine content on Wiki-projects (particularly pages on

mental health).

Wikimedia UK (WMUK) is a registered charity established to support volunteers in the United Kingdom who work on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. As such, it is a Wikimedia chapter approved by the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and hosts those projects.

Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the for-profit web hosting company Wikia, later

renamed Fandom. Wales has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune and WT Social.

During his studies in Alabama, Wales had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game—and thereby experienced the

potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.

In 1996, Wales and two partners founded Bomis, a web portal featuring user-generated webrings and, for a time, erotic photographs.

While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy

of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy.

Lawrence Mark Sanger (born July 16, 1968) is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales.

Wales

has said that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger's designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in

January 2002.

In December 2011, Bell Pottinger came under public scrutiny after managers were secretly recorded talking to fake representatives of the Uzbek government and violating Wikipedia rules by removing negative information and replacing it with positive spin.

The

Independent reported that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales had described Bell Pottinger as "ethically blind", after it had admitted altering Wikipedia pages relating to its clients.

In June 2014, Bell Pottinger was a notable absentee from a group of major agencies which

publicly pledged to abide by Wikipedia's rules and end the practice of amending their clients' Wikipedia pages.

Bell Pottinger’s work during the Iraq War came under the U.S.'s Information Operations Task Force and Joint Psychological Operations Task Force. As part of the

project Bell Pottinger created fake videos that were approved by General David Petraeus and that appeared to be the work of Al-Qaeda. It also created and distributed news stories that had the appearance of being produced by Arab media outlets. Lord Bell confirmed Bell Pottinger

reported to the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. National Security Council on its work in Iraq.

Lord Bell, who advised Margaret Thatcher on media matters, was a co-founder of Bell Pottinger, which, until July 2012, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime Communications plc.

On 19 November 1977 Lord Bell was fined £50 for indecency. He had exposed himself while masturbating at his Hampstead bathroom window on 21 October in full view of female passers-by.