Say it With Numbers: #8-2008

o When the 20th century began scarcely 14% of all humans lived in the city. By the time it ended, the figure was roughly 50%. And the 21st century will have perhaps 33 megacities rising up by the year 2015

o The CIA has more employees worldwide than the UN

o Hong Kong
§ Almost everyone who lives here – 6 million of its 6.2 million people – is 100% Chinese
§ 2/3rds of the land is parkland

o As recently as 1971, 97% of all Canadians had been of the traditional kind, of European descent with the rest mostly ‘aboriginals’, as the Canadians call them

o Because asthma-medication stimulants are allowed in the Olympics, 60% of the US team in 1994 claimed to be suffering from asthma

o Officially, intercaste and interreligious marriages have been legal in India since 1872, almost a 100 years before interracial marriages were legalized in all 50 American states

o India
§ The share of agriculture in GDP has shrunk from 61% in 1951 to 19% now
§ 8.9% of Indian workforce is directly or indirectly employed by the tourism sector
§ Partition: In barely 3 months, approximately 1.25 million, constituting more than 90% of the total Sindhi Hindu population, left their beloved native land
§ The Punjab secession movement: Between 1981 and 2001, a total of 21,608 people, including 11,776 civilians and 1,748 security personnel were killed in the fight against militancy

o The human male releases about 66 million sperm during each ... encounter. It takes only one sperm to make a baby, there are 59,999,999 extras along for the ride.

o There are 500 billion planets out there, and there are 100 billion other galaxies.

o Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf country with a population of around 6 lakhs, nearly 1/3rd of which is accounted for by the ethnic Indian community…no other country in the world has such a high percentage of Indians.