diff --git a/Lib/urllib/request.py b/Lib/urllib/request.py
index 3896aa0ecf9..c206a8a5b22 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib/request.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib/request.py
@@ -263,7 +263,7 @@ def __init__(self, url, data=None, headers={},
                  origin_req_host=None, unverifiable=False,
                  method=None):
         # unwrap('<URL:type://host/path>') --> 'type://host/path'
-        self.full_url = unwrap(to_bytes(url))
+        self.full_url = unwrap(url)
         self.full_url = quote(self.full_url, safe="%/:=&?~#+!$,;'@()*[]|")
         self.full_url, self.fragment = splittag(self.full_url)
         self.data = data
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 3e856fc2b97..0d7f53e5584 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ Core and Builtins
 Library
 -------
 
-- Issue #14826: Quote urls in urllib.request.Request identically to how they
+- Issue #14826: Quote urls in urllib.request.Request similar to how they
   are quoted by urllib.request.URLopener. Allows urls to spaces in them to work
   transparently with urllib.request.urlopen(...). Patch contributed by Stephen
   Thorne.
@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ Library
 
 - Issue #15176: Clarified behavior, documentation, and implementation
   of os.listdir().
-  
+
 - Issue #15061: Re-implemented hmac.compare_digest() in C to prevent further
   timing analysis and to support all buffer protocol aware objects as well as
   ASCII only str instances safely.