Yasser Arafat has been to a restaurant only once in the past forty years. [Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2002]
It takes 100 years for the deep-sea clam to grow to the length of a third of an inch. [The Book of Useless Information, John Blake Publishing, 2002]
In 2000, nearly 55 per cent of American students gaining degrees in black and ethnic studies were white.[Boston Globe, 23rd June 2002]
The FBI had a 1,427 page dossier on Albert Einstein. [Forward, 14th June 2002]
In Britain, 87 per cent of primary school teacher trainees are female. [The Guardian, 15th July 2002]
Despite recent spending increases, Britain still spends proportionally less on public spending (41.8 per cent of GDP) than the EU average (47 per cent). [Financial Times, 16th July 2002]
More than a quarter of senior managers at the Barclays Bank of Zambia have died from Aids-related illnesses. [International Affairs, July 2002]
France has had five Jewish prime ministers since the second world war. [The New York Review of Books, 18th July 2002]
Most telephones have dial tones in the key of F. [The Book of Useless Information, John Blake Publishing, 2002]
Since 1952, the UK population has risen by one fifth-from 50m to 60m. Virtually all of this increase has occurred in England; the population of Scotland is almost exactly as it was in 1952. [Horizons, the Office of National Statistics magazine, June 2002]
In developed countries, tariffs on imports from developing countries are on average four times higher than those on imports from other developed countries. [The National Interest, Summer 2002]
