- Drivers called Ben are most likely to crash their cars; Ians are the safest. [The Guardian, 8th July 2006]
- New Zealand's child murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000 children, the third worst in the OECD and more than twice the British rate. The overall murder rate is 2.5 per 100,000 people, compared with 1.5 in Britain. And New Zealand has 50 per cent more rapes. [The Times, 7th August 2006]
- 81 percent of British Muslims consider themselves Muslim first and British second. This is a higher proportion than in Jordan, Egypt or Turkey, and exceeded only by Pakistan. [The Guardian, 11th August 2006]
- Fidel Castro's fascination with Alexander the Great led him to name three of his sons Alexis, Alexander and Alejandro. [New Yorker, 31st July 2006]
- The average Dutchman is 6 feet 1 tall, around four inches taller than British or American men. [MSNBC, 22nd July 2006]
- One in three school-aged girls in Turkey does not attend school; in the Kurdish region, only 14 per cent of girls attend secondary school. [The Economist, 29th July 2006]
- Explosions from the battle of the Somme could be heard on Hampstead Heath. [Somme: The Heroism and Horror of War by Martin Gilbert]
- Tony Blair is the first sitting prime minister to visit California. [The Guardian, 28th July 2006]
- China is now the third largest international food donor in the world, largely because of its cereal shipments to North Korea. [Financial Times, 20th July 2006]
- Since 2001, US federal spending has risen 45 per cent. Education has increased 137 per cent and international spending by 111 per cent. Next year non-defence discretionary spending will be up 42 per cent since 2001—double the increase enacted in Clinton's first six years in office. [The Heritage Foundation]
