A fact from Most wanted list appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 February 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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The FBI began with its "most wanted man", actually a string of 1930's Midwest criminals who were hunted down, one by one, in highly-publicized operations that often ended in shootouts. The FBI, and Hoover in particular, was criticized for what was described as publicity stunts, and the practice was discontinued, eventually becoming the ten most wanted list. The official story was that the big criminals all tried to be "No.1", so the list was encouraging criminality. I'll try to find sources for this, which I learned years ago. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 15:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]