After the death of Princess Diana, Colombia's flower sales rose by 20 per cent. [The Globe and Mail, 3rd October 1997]
Nearly one in three Londoners would like to see the Spice Girls abducted by aliens. [Columbia TriStar]
The UN employs 53,333 people in its offices; three times as many work for McDonald's. [Ploughshares Monitor, 1997]
Of Egypt's 61m people, 95 per cent live along the Nile. [The Globe and Mail, 16th September 1997]
There are 20,000 faith healers in the UK, nearly twice the number of Anglican priests.
[The Guardian, Madeleine Bunting, October 1997]
The historian Robert Blake says there are more Britons living and working in the Indian sub-continent today than at the height of the raj. [The Times, 14th September 1997]
The proportion of UK ex-directory customers has risen from 24 per cent in 1991 to 37 per cent this year. Of these, 51 per cent chose to be ex-directory to avoid nuisance calls, ncluding telesales. [FT, Don Cruickshank, 26th September 1997]
In Canada's four western provinces, there are more people whose mother tongue is
Cantonese than French, one of the country's two official languages. [The Economist,
20th September 1997]
