39 Best Alternatives to Wikipedia

The American Presidency Project is a project out of the University of California Santa Barbara. If you want to know something about American presidents, it's here. The site has over 100,000 documents that are freely available to the public.

Wolfram Alpha search engine has an impressive library archive where you'll find thousands of downloadable resources from Wolfram research.

The Farmer's Almanac has been around in different forms since 1792, and today's online version is even more useful. Use the Almanac to look up tide tables, planting charts, recipes, forecasts, moon rises, and everyday advice.

The Martindale Reference Desk is divided into multiple sections: Language, Science, Business, Mathematics, and more. Simply choose the subject area you're interested in and browse the references.

Bibliomania offers more than 2,000 classic texts for you to read, as well as study guides and a searchable index.

The Encyclopedia Smithsonian is the definitive collection of everything the Smithsonian Museum has to offer. Search over 13 million records with images, video, and sound files; electronic journals; and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives, and libraries.

Open Library is an Internet Archive project aimed at compiling one web page for every book ever published. To date, they have amassed over 20 million records, all of which are freely accessible.

Stumped on a legal term? Find the definition in plain English at the NOLO Legal Dictionary, a free resource that provides easy to understand information on hundreds of commonly used legal words and phrases.

Put together by the University of Michigan Library, the Government Documents Center is an exhaustive database of U.S. government statistics and factual documents.

3,000 years of world history presented interactively in timelines, graphics, and maps. Select the time period you're interested in, then use the menus on the left and right to manipulate your data.

Search through the comprehensive medical database at the Merck Medical Library, an exhaustive index of medical information culled from the Merck series of health resources for both medical professionals and laymen.

LibrarySpot is a reference utopia. Browse a list of libraries online, newspapers, poetry, archives, maps, current events, dictionaries, and more. If you can name it, you can probably find it at LibrarySpot.

Medline Plus comes from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. The site has indexes of searches pre-formulated with drug resources, medical encyclopedias, interactive tutorials, and current medical news.

The Library of Congress, one of the largest American cultural repositories, has placed its incredible collection of records online in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

There are over 160 million collections at the Library of Congress that include books, periodicals, manuscripts, music, recordings, images, and more. The LC Catalog contains 17 million records that describe them.

Over 7000 articles related to anything mythology: Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic, Native American, and more. The mythology sections are divided into geographical regions, so you can search based on country, plus, there are special gallery sections such as heroes, genealogical information, and more.

OneLook, a meta-search dictionary engine that indexes millions of words in over 1,000 different dictionaries, is another website like Wikipedia. Use OneLook for simple definitions, related words, related concepts, phrases that contain a certain word, translations, and more.

If you want auto research, Edmunds is the place to do it. You'll find information on new and used cars, car reviews, industry news, auto shows, local car dealerships, a glossary of terms, and savvy auto advice.

If you need to know about a computer or technology related term, you'll find it at Webopedia. The search tool is handy but you can also use the All Categories page to locate terms under a specific type.

Anything you want to know about nearly any country or region in the world is in the CIA World Factbook. This amazing resource offers information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 countries, along with maps, flags, and country comparisons.

Need to know about a legal issue? Use FindLaw to do initial research on anything legal-related, as well as find a lawyer in your local area and interact with the FindLaw legal community.

This Wikipedia alternative also has legal forms you can purchase, and the forms are location-specific.

FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, monitors accuracy in the US political process by diligently fact-checking everything that prominent political figures say and do.

Anything you want to know about sports — stats, box scores, game logs, playoffs — can be found at Sports Reference. This site offers detailed information for fans of baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer.

If you need help with writing, you'll find it here. Style guides, grammar, mechanics, ESL resources, and much more.

Need to know something about chemicals, compounds, substances, or bioassays? You'll find it at PubChem, a comprehensive database put together by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

PDR Health is a production of the Physician's Desk Reference. Use PDR Health to look up information about prescriptions, herbal medicines, and user-friendly health and wellness information.

Whether you need to convert simple measurements or complicated astronomy figures, you'll be able to do it at OnlineConversion.com, an extensive site featuring hundreds of conversion tools.

If you need to translate something, you'll be able to do it with Lexicool. Over 8,000 dictionaries and glossaries are available in a variety of languages.

Find maps and directions at Google Maps. You can also check out traffic in various locations, Street View, and satellite views. Google Maps also periodically offers special features, such as maps for the Winter Olympics.

The Genetics Home Reference, a project of the National Library of Medicine, is a stellar resource for genetic information and data about genetic conditions.

Get demographic information about nearly any community in the United States at ePodunk, a fascinating data collection for tens of thousands of cities, towns, and suburbs in the U.S.

Doing research on a company's human rights impact is difficult — unless you visit the Business & Human Rights Resource Center. This Wikipedia-like resource covers over 9,000 companies in dozens of countries and deals with topics such as discrimination, environment, poverty and development, labor, medical health, security, and trade.

BookFinder is a search engine for textbooks and new, used, rare, and out-of-print, books. It helps you find the best prices for books from over 100,000 booksellers around the world.

Over 150 million books are available here. If you want to find something obscure, this is the place.

View full country profiles from all over the world. In addition to basic stats, the BBC also provides audio and video clips from their archives.

Need help on how to pronounce a word in virtually any language? Try Forvo, the largest pronunciation guide online, with hundreds of thousands of words and pronunciations in hundreds of languages.

Worldmapper is a collection of hundreds of world maps, each focusing on a particular topic. For example, you can find maps on CO2 emissions per capita, migration, disease, language, vegetation, literacy, income, and lots more.

WorldCat searches the largest network of library content and services online, tapping into libraries from all over the world that you're sifting through two billion items, including books, DVDs, CDs, and articles.

At Our Documents, you can explore 100 cornerstone documents of American history, such as the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and more.

The Voice of the Shuttle started in 1994 and is one of the largest humanities resources on the web today. Anything from anthropology to religious studies is covered here.