Wikipedia's first sentence called it “earliest known englishman to convert to islam in the 16th century”. Today it says “one of the earliest known englishmen to convert to islam”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2010 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2010
John Nelson was the earliest known Englishman to convert to Islam in the 16th century.1He is mentioned by the 16th century writer Richard Hakluyt in his book Voyager's Tales . The king had there before in his house a son of a yeoman of our Queen's guard, whom the king's son had enforced to turn Turk [Muslim]; his name was John Nelson. Islam in Britain , 1558 - 1685 by Nabil Matar (Cambridge University Press 1998) Voyager's Tales, 3, The voyage made to Tripolis in Barbary, in the year 1584 , Richard Haklyut2
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 368966649.
The opening as it stood in 2015 3 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
John Nelson was one of the earliest known Englishman to convert to Islam .
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 659456380.
The opening as it stood in 2020
John Nelson was one of the earliest known Englishmen to convert to Islam .This information comes from the book The Voyage made to Tripoli (1583) by Thomas Saunders.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 790342005. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “earliest known englishman to convert to islam in the 16th century”. Today it says “one of the earliest known englishmen to convert to islam”. Read the current article and compare.
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
earliest known englishman to convert to islam in the 16th century
Now
one of the earliest known englishmen to convert to islam
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
