Say it with Numbers: #1-2009

* During the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries in Europe an estimated 5 million women were executed for witchcraft

* Riyadh’s population is 4.26 million……of the total 34% are expatriate workers

* It is estimated that 40% of private wealth in Saudi Arabia is held by Saudi women……..many do so through the front of a male representative, often a family member.

* Only 20% of all doctors in Saudi Arabia are Saudi, with 80% being expatriates. This is an exact reversal of the United States

* Saudi Arabia is the most urbanized country in the entire Arab world and only 7% of the population of the Kingdom remains nomadic

* ……..divorce rates have risen astronomically, to 1 in 3 Saudi marriages ending in divorce by 2002

* Not long ago the Manchus were a separate race with their own culture and traditions. Today, only 2 to 3 million Manchurians are left in Manchuria, where 75 million Chinese have settled. In Eastern Turkestan, which the Chinese now call Xinjiang, the Chinese population has grown from 200,000 in 1949 to over 7 million today, more than half of the total population. In the wake of the Chinese colonization of Inner Mongolia, the Chinese number 8.5 million, Mongolians only 2.5 million. At present, in the whole of Tibet, we estimate that there are already 7.5 million Chinese, outnumbering the Tibetan population of around 6 million

- Dalai Lama

From ‘Cobra Road. An Indian Journey’ by Trevor Fishlock

* General Dyer (the man behind the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) was forced to resign after an official inquiry. The ‘Morning Post’ opened a fund, which raised a tribute of 26,000 UK pounds, the equivalent of about 700,000 UK pounds today. Rudyard Kipling donated 10 pounds.


* Britain ruled India with the co-operation of 565 native princes whose territories covered more than 3/5th of the country and 1/4th of the population.


* The largest of the princely states of Rajasthan was the kingdom of Mewar, of which Udaipur was the chief city. Its Maharanas have ruled since the 6th century and the present one is the 76th of the line in the world’s oldest princely dynasty


* The last of the Asiatic lions are now in their final redoubt, in the Gir forest of Gujarat………..Asiatic lions once roamed from central Europe through Persia and northern India as far as Bengal. In the last century British and Indian sportsmen shot them to the edge of extinction. They were wiped out in the Delhi area by 1834, one hunter killing around 300 of them. By 1880 their population was down to about 200, but today, because they are not hunted, there are more than 300.


* …….there was a time when man-powered litter was common: Captain Seymour Burt was carried in a palanquin for 1200 miles from Bombay to Simla in 1838. It was powered by a team of 16 bearers, working in relays, at a rate of 30 miles a day.