When the coronavirus scare kept me largely housebound for six months, I became a regular visitor to the internet portal for Wikipedia, the search engine that can tell you everything about everything.

From the definition of the word “farrago” to the treatment for a sore throat, Wikipedia has a seemingly endless ability to supply information on every subject under the sun.

With more time to kill while being cooped up in my apartment, I began devoting one hour each day to looking up the biographies of people who interest me, and to revisit historical events for which my knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep.

When I remember back to my teenage years of attending movies at Joe Burket’s theater in Roaring Spring, the Blair in Hollidaysburg and the Roxey in Martinsburg, the names of the 1950s stars and their life stories piqued my interest. With a few clicks of a mouse, I could satisfy my curiosity about the early beginnings, careers and deaths of old timers like Janet Blair, Jack Benny, Betty Grable, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello and hundreds of others.

More recent subjects of interest were Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Lady Gaga.

Historical events that I have clicked on include the achievements that resulted in the award of Nobel Peace Prizes and all the American presidential elections in which the loser got more popular votes than the winner.

When I read books and newspapers or see something on TV that grabs me, I write down the names for later Wikipedia research. A recent list included Susan Rice (politician), Joan Fontaine (actress), Son Tay (Vietnam War POW rescue attempt), Princess Lee Radziwill (sister of Jackie Kennedy) and The Godfather (late night movie).

I know enough about most celebrities so there are only parts of their lives for which I need to fill in the blanks. That specialized information is usually contained in two parts of Wikipedia’s biographical format: the “Early Life” and “Personal Life” sections. In Early Life, I learn about their parents, education and factors that molded their lives. In Personal Life is the juicy stuff: marriages, divorces, affairs, squandered wealth and scandals.

For instance, Clint Eastwood, at age 90, needs almost an entire page to list his numerous casual and long-term romantic relationships of varying length and intensity. It has been said that while celebrities may have once obsessed about what will be in their obituaries, they now wonder what Wikipedia might say.

In the Personal Life section for Blair County native and celebrated Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper are the comments that she divorced her husband, Dewolf Hopper, in 1922 and was the mother of actor William Hopper. It also states that she died in 1966 and left an estate of $475,000 (today worth about $6,103,133). Not bad for an ambitious butcher’s daughter born in Hollidaysburg.

BTW ­– that’s internet lingo for “by the way” — farrago means “network” or “hodgepodge,” as in a “farrago of lies.”

A sore throat can be treated with honey-laced hot tea.

There have been three presidential elections in which the candidate with the fewer popular votes was declared the winner — two in the last 20 years.

Jim Wentz writes a monthly column for the Mirror.