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.

The world’s longest nonfiction work is The Yongle Dadian, a 10,000-volume encyclopaedia produced by 5,000 scholars during the Ming Dynasty in China 500 years ago.

When Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, 6 replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price, in the 3 years before the original was recovered.

The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, stores 18 million books on approximately 850 km (530 miles) of bookshelves. The collections include 119 million items, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps and 53 million manuscripts.

Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Meteorologica in 350 BC – it remained the standard textbook on weather for 2,000 years.

The first Oxford English Dictionary was published in April 1928, 50 years after it was started. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest edition fills 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which is available on a single CD.

Usher holds the Star Search record for the longest note by a child: 12.1 seconds

Paris Hilton has size 11 feet! “All those super cute shoes like Guccis and Monolos look like clown shoes on me”

Colin Farrell says that Marilyn Monroe was the first woman he fell in love with. “I used to leave Smarties, the Irish equivalent of M&Ms, under my pillow with a little note saying, “I know you’re dead but these are very tasty and you should come and have a few. i wont tell anyone”

Brittany Murphy claims she started speaking at 4 and a half months. She also says she was a very “energetic child, really bubbly…extremely precocious”

In a high school talent show, Matt Damon performed the talking heads’ “Burning Down the House”

Thomas Cook, the world’s first travel agency in the world, was founded in 1850.

The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.

The British royal family changed their surname (last name) from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, the name of their castle, in 1917.

When Alexander Graham Bell passed away in 1922, every telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada was silent for one minute.

Burt Reynold’s father was the chief of police in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The oldest existing governing body operates in Althing in Iceland. It was established in 930 AD.

About US Presidents and Vice Presidents -
George Washington was inaugurated for his first term, on 30 April 1789, at Federal Hall in New York City. His second inauguration took place in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson was the first to be inaugurated in Washington DC. Jefferson also was the only one to walk to and from his inauguration.

The US Presidential candidate with the highest popular vote ever was Ronald Reagan. In 1984 he secured 54,455,075 votes. Reagan was also the candidate with the highest electoral vote: 525, in 1984. In that year he equalled the 49 states that Nixon carried in 1972.

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was the first woman to run for office of US President. She and her sister were the first women to run a Wall Street brokerage (1870).

In 1975, Emil Matalik put himself forward as US Presidential candidate. He advocated a maximum of one animal and one tree per family because he believed that there were too many animals and plant life on earth. Louis Abalofia also put himself forward: his campaign poster featured a photo of him in the nude, with the slogan “I have nothing to hide.” In the 1860s, financier George Francis Train ran for office with one item: the introduction of a new calender based on his birth date.