- Brent, in north London, is the only place in Britain where women earn as much as men on average. Copeland (home of Sellafield) in Cumbria has the poorest women compared to the men. (PropertyFinder)
- One in 500 Londoners walks to work. (Time Out, 5th March 2008)
- Over 99.9 per cent of the land on Earth is not occupied by a person at a given time. Therefore, while 50 to 200 "large" pieces of man-made space debris return to Earth every year, experts know of only one report of a person being hit. Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was struck on the shoulder in 1997 by a small piece of debris from a discarded piece of a Delta rocket. She was unhurt. (AP, 20th February 2008)
- The calorific value of the typical English diet in 1850 was roughly equivalent to the average Indian diet today. (The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100, by Robert Fogel)
- 658,644 new houses were built in Spain in 2006, while 168,000 were built in England. Adjusting for population, Spain built five times more houses per head. (Stephen Nickell, Nuffield College)
- There are more than 400 escalators on the London Underground. (Londonist.com, 17th March 2008)
- Indians account for 36 per cent of scientists at Nasa, 38 per cent of doctors in the US, and 34 per cent of employees at Microsoft, 28 per cent at IBM, 17 per cent at Intel and 13 per cent at Xerox. (The Times of India, 11th March 2008)
- Between 2000 and 2005, the number of people in the US playing golf more than 25 times a year fell by a third, from 6.9m to 4.5m. (New York Times, 21st February 2008)
- In 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire internet did in 2000. (New York Times, 13th March 2008)
- No private individual currently owns a certified Vermeer painting. (Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen)
- Inner London is the richest region in the EU's 27 countries. GDP per inhabitant in Inner London in 2005 was more than three times the EU average—or 303 per cent. Luxembourg was next with 264 per cent of the average, then Brussels with 241 per cent. The EU's poorest region, at 24 per cent of the average, was northeastern Romania. (Guardian, 12th February 2008)
- Women earn 57 per cent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees in the US, and a majority of research PhDs, but only 24 per cent of PhDs in the physical sciences. (The Survey of Earned Doctorates)
- It is possible to donate half a liver. (BBC)
- Every day, 44,000 babies are born in China—roughly the population of Canterbury. (Prospect research)
- Britain now has 47,800 PR people to 45,000 journalists. (Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies)
- The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is still hunting 488 suspected living Nazis. (Harper's, January 2008)
- The total annual health expenditure for the 900m people in Africa is £9.8bn—less than a tenth of the cost of the NHS, catering for 60m. (Prospect research)
- A quarter of students drop out of university. (The Guardian, 23rd February 2008)
- Ronald Reagan was born six years before John F Kennedy. (Prospect research)
