- The first written Afrikaans was in Arabic script, not Roman. [Prospect, p73]
- Britain is now the only major country in the world in which French is the main foreign language taught in schools. [The Times, 8th April 2004]
- The average European man is now taller than the average American for the first time since 1775. [BBC News Online, 14th April 2004]
- German GDP per capita is now, for the first time, below the EU average. [The Economist, 27th March 2004]
- A third of the world's obese people live in developing countries. [50 Facts that Should Change the World by Jessica Williams, Icon Books]
- According to the 1851 British census, of the 3.3m people living in towns and cities, only one third had been born in the same place. [Introduction to Charles Dickens's Hard Times by David Craig]
- Only 4 per cent of US films are made by women, compared to 25 per cent in Iran. [The Observer, 18th January 2004]
- In 1971, a third of Britons over 16 had no teeth; this has now fallen to just 12 per cent. [The Times, 1st April 2004]
- Last year the Welsh assembly achieved parity in members between men and women - the first democratically elected chamber in the world to do so. [Vernon Bognador, p24]
- Half of all Australians will contract skin cancer at some point in their lives. [Sunday Times, 11th April 2004]
- In the US, between 1983 and 2000, the number of outsourced jobs increased by slightly over half, from 6.5m to 10m. During the same period, the number of "insourced" jobs - jobs outsourced to the US by other countries - rose more than two and a half times, from 2.5m to 6.5m. [Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004]
