- Roughly 11,000 British people live full time in the Palestinian territories—around the same number that live in Brazil. [IPPR]
- Of the 7.5m people that use television subtitles in Britain, 6m have no hearing impairment. [Ofcom]
- The world's lowest fertility rates are in Hong Kong (0.95), Macau (1.02) and Singapore (1.06). [The Economist, 12th October 2006]
- 57 per cent of arms deliveries to Iraq between 1973 and 2002 came from the Soviet Union, 13 per cent from France, 12 per cent from China, 0.5 per cent from the US and 0.2 per cent from Britain. [What's Left? by Nick Cohen]
- Of India's 1.1bn population, only 35m pay income tax. [New York Times, 17th January 2007]
- A penny dropped from the top of the Empire State building would do no more than sting a pedestrian at ground level. [Livescience.com]
- The proportion of French people who describe themselves as Catholic is 51 per cent, down from 62 per cent in just four years. [The Independent, 22nd January 2007]
- The percentage of Nigerians living on less than a dollar a day has risen from 32 per cent in 1985 to 71 per cent today. [Harper's, February 2007]
- Just 17 per cent of the US population lives outside metropolitan areas. [The Economist, 23rd December 2006]
- Bill Gates gets 4m emails every day. [New Statesman, 25th January 2007]
- Israelis own 10 per cent of the private land on the moon. [Jerusalem Post, 4th January 2007]
- A tenth of the world's population relies on the river Ganges for water. [BBC World]
- Just before the first world war, the home office employed 28 people. It now employs 70,000. [Harvey Cole]
- Americans use less water per head today than 25 years ago. [New Yorker, 23rd October 2006]
- In England and Wales, 12 people are imprisoned for every 1,000 crimes committed. In Spain the figure is 48 per 1,000; in Ireland it is 33 per 1,000. [The Independent, 2nd February 2007]
- Mao Zedong had a hairdresser called Big Beard Wang. [The Age, 26th August 2006]
- Every year, an average of 12 Japanese tourists in Paris have to be repatriated due to severe culture shock. [Foreign Policy Passport, 23rd December 2006]
- In Inuktitut Eskimo, there is a single word meaning "I should try not to become an alcoholic"—Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga. [New York Sun, 28th December 2006]
- The record for the highest number of short stories published in the New Yorker by an author in one year is held by EB White (28 in 1927). The overall record is held by James Thurber, who published 273 stories from 1927-61. [Emdashes.com]
