diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 85de4df6b1..a88ce52f7b 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+Mon Jul  5 22:54:39 2004  Tanaka Akira  <akr@m17n.org>
+
+	* lib/uri/common.rb (Kernel#URI): new global method for parsing URIs.
+
 Mon Jul  5 09:02:52 2004  Nobuyoshi Nakada  <nobu@ruby-lang.org>
 
 	* eval.c (rb_thread_yield, rb_f_catch): 4th argument to rb_yield_0()
diff --git a/lib/uri/common.rb b/lib/uri/common.rb
index 175ef97304..f5772084e2 100644
--- a/lib/uri/common.rb
+++ b/lib/uri/common.rb
@@ -595,3 +595,13 @@ module URI
   end
 
 end
+
+module Kernel
+  # alias for URI.parse.
+  #
+  # This method is introduced at 1.8.2.
+  def URI(uri_str) # :doc:
+    URI.parse(uri_str)
+  end
+  module_function :URI
+end
diff --git a/test/uri/test_common.rb b/test/uri/test_common.rb
index 1e1a40d115..a159901ea6 100644
--- a/test/uri/test_common.rb
+++ b/test/uri/test_common.rb
@@ -43,6 +43,13 @@ class TestCommon < Test::Unit::TestCase
     assert_equal nil, ':'.slice(URI.regexp)
     assert_equal 'From:', 'From:'.slice(URI.regexp)
   end
+
+  def test_kernel_uri
+    expected = URI.parse("http://www.ruby-lang.org/")
+    assert_equal(expected, URI("http://www.ruby-lang.org/"))
+    assert_equal(expected, Kernel::URI("http://www.ruby-lang.org/"))
+    assert_raise(NoMethodError) { Object.new.URI("http://www.ruby-lang.org/") }
+  end
 end