In 2005, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold more copies in one day than did Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code that year. [The Independent, 10 June 2007]
About 70 per cent of Chinese students who leave to study abroad don't return. [Richard Spencer, Daily Telegraph blog, 15th June 2007]
A late 1940s survey found that 49 per cent of Britons couldn't name a single British colony. [Austerity Britain 1945-51, by David Kynaston]
Elgar was the only major composer who mastered the bassoon. [The Spectator, 9th June 2007]
20 per cent more babies were born in Berlin in March 2007—nine months after the World Cup—than in March 2006. [Financial Times, 9th June 2007]
12,000 of the BBC's 25,000 employees have registered for the social website Facebook. [The Guardian, 18th June 2007]
In 1900, Americans spent nearly twice as much on funerals as on medicine, and less than 2 per cent took holidays. [New York Times, 10th June 2007]
The EU exports more to Switzerland than to China. [Wall Street Journal, 12th June 2007]
650,000 people in South Korea have a Manchester United credit card. [International Herald Tribune, 15th April 2007]
Advertising wine is banned on French television. [BBC News ONLINE, 27th February 2007]
Bird flu kills someone almost every week in Indonesia. [AP, 24th April 2007]
In 2003 in the US, power generation companies spent less on R&D than pet food companies did. [The Economist, 2nd June 2007]
In recent years, Japan, Argentina and Brazil have legalised incest. [The Guardian, 27th February 2007]
Russian GDP is still only at around 85 per cent of its 1989 figure. [New Left Review, March-April 2007]
The mass of air is roughly one kilo per cubic metre. Large rooms contain several tonnes of air. [An Ocean of Air: a Natural History of the Atmosphere by Gabrielle Walker]
At a recent Republican party convention, it cost $5,000 to pose for a photo with President Bush. Last summer, GOP officials charged at least $10,000, and in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, a Bush photo-op commanded $25,000. [Huffington Post, 4th June 2007]
10 per cent of the members of the US National Academy of Sciences are women. This is up from just 6 per cent in 2000. [Nature, 10th May 2007]
New Zealanders visit the cinema an average of eight times a year—more than anyone else. The British make about three visits; Indians just one and a half. [Economist.com, 31st May 2007]
Last year, more than 70,000 pupils who should have been taking a GCSE did not turn up to the exam. [The Observer, 6th May 2007]
More British servicemen and women have committed suicide over the past two decades than have died in military action.
[The Independent, 1st April 2007]
International donations to the Palestinian authority almost tripled last year, despite the boycott of Hamas. [Haaretz, 16th May 2007]
44 per cent of French people have a negative opinion of France—higher than the number of Americans that do (38 per cent). [Reuters, 27th April 2007]
