Half the world’s population earns about 5% of the world’s wealth.

Almost 1,2 billion people are underfed – the same number of people that are overweight to the point of obesity.

In the developed countries, the proportion of adults married has declined from 72% in 1970 to 60% in 1996. The chance of a first marriage ending in divorce is between 50% and 67%. The chance that a second marriage will end in divorce is about 10% higher than for the first marriage.

In 1998, US states spent $30 billion in funds on correctional services and $24 billion on social welfare.

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.

More personal telephone calls are made on Mother’s Day in the USA than on any other day in any other country.

The odds of being struck by lightning are about 600,000 to one.

92% of Chinese belong to the Han nationality, which has been China’s largest nationality for centuries. The rest of the nation consists of about 55 minority groups.

There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia, a nation of 17 million people.

The chance of being born on Leap Day is about 684 out of a million, or 1 in 1461. Less than 5 million people have their birthday on Leap Day.

In 1750 there were about 800 million people in the world. In 1850 there were a billion more, and by 1950, another billion. Then it took just 50 years to double to 6 billion.

In 1870 there were more Irish living in London than in Dublin.

The world average of egg consumption per capita is 230.

Since 1972, some 64 million tons of aluminum cans (about 3 trillion cans) have been produced. Placed end-to-end, they could stretch to the moon about a thousand times. Cans represent less than 1% of solid waste material.

New Zealand is home to 4 million people and 70 million sheep.

The world’s largest coins, in size and standard value, were copper plates used in Alaska around 1850. They were about a metre (3 ft) long, half-a-metre (about 2 ft) wide, weighed 40 kg (90 lb), and were worth $2,500.

In 2000, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is the second wealthiest woman, with $5,2 billion.

Australians are the heaviest gamblers in the world; an estimated 82% of Australians bet. That is twice as much per capita as Europeans or Americans. Yet, Australia, with less than 1% of the world population, has 20% of the world’s poker machines.

A third of the world’s people live on less than $2 a day, with 1,2 billion people living on less than $1 a day.

In the 1400s, global income rose only 0,1% per year; today it often tops 5%.

Of the more than $50 billion worth of diet products sold every year, almost $20 billion are spent on imitation fats and sugar substitutes.

Statistics show that people with high, medium and low income groups spend about the same amount on Christmas gifts.

Small-time gamblers who place small bet in order to prolong the excitement of a game are called “dead fish” by game operators because the longer the playing time, the greater the chances of losing.

The income gap between the richest fifth of the world’s people and the poorest measured by average national income per head increased from 30 to one in 1960, to 74 to one in 1998.

Annual global spending on education is $80 billion.

Tobacco is a $200 billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year – about 1,000 cigarettes for each person on earth.