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.

The global expenditure on healthcare and nutrition is $13 billion.

The average age of Forbes’s 400 wealthiest individuals is 63.

If Los Angeles County was a country, it would be the 19th largest economy in the world.

In the 17th century, wool fabrics accounted for about two-thirds of England’s foreign trade. Today, the leading wool producers are Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and China.

One million dollars’ worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.

Global sales of pre-recorded music total more than $40 billion.

In 1900, the price of gold was less than $40 per ounce. It reached $600 in 1930, now struggling to reach $400 per ounce.

In 1955 the richest woman in the world was Mrs Hetty Green Wilks, who left an estate of $95 million in a will that was found in a tin box with four pieces of soap.

Money notes are not made from paper, it is made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen.

A million dollars’ worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb).

The term “smart money” refers to gamblers who have inside information or have arranged a fix, the gambling term for insuring the outcome of an event by illegal methods.

Queen Elizabeth II is one of the 10th wealthiest women in the world.

In gambling language, for a gambling house a “sure-thing” is a wager that a player has little chance of winning; “easy money” is their profit from an inexperienced bettor, an unlucky player is called a “stiff.”

In 1965, CEOs earned on average 44 times more than factory workers. In 1998, CEOs earned on average 326 times more than factory workers and in 1999, they earned 419 times more than factory workers.

Tourism is the world’s biggest industry, affecting 240 million jobs.

The term “Blue Chip” comes from the color of the poker chip with the highest value, blue.

If you stack one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton.

Nessie, the Loch Ness monster is protected by the 1912 Protection of Animals Acts of Scotland. With good reason – Nessie is worth $40 million annually to Scottish tourism.

In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made out of wood for a brief period. The wood notes came in $1, $5 and $10 values.

Excessive use of credit is cited as a major cause of non-business bankruptcy, second only to unemployment.

In 2001 the richest woman was Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of L’Oreal’s founder. She has a net worth of $14 billion (depending on how the stock market did today).

About 30% of consumers use their credit card as their main means of buying Christmas goodies, 70% do not save to buy Christmas gifts and 86% of consumers do their Christmas shopping during December.