Why wget ignores query string in the url?

& is a special character in most shell environments, you can use double quotes to quote the URL to pass the whole thing in as the parameter to wget:

wget "http://www.ted.com/talks/quick-list?sort=date&order=desc&page=18"

1. Store your list of URLs in a file (each URL in a separate line!!):

   echo "http://www.ted.com/talks/quick-list?sort=date&order=desc&page=18 http://www.ted.com/talks/quick-list?sort=date&order=desc&page=17 ... " > wget_filelist.txt

2. Call wget to retrieve the stuff:

   wget -i wget_filelist.txt