Tuesday

On this day

1812 - Charles Dickens was born.

Monday

Interesting Facts - Death

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics,  491,348 people died in the UK in 2009.

(Of these 238,062 were male, and 253,286 were female.   The biggest cause of death was circulatory disease, followed by cancer, respiratory disease and digestive disease respectively.  The stats show only 17,878 people didn't die from disease, the highest cause of death in this category was transport accidents.  So, maybe it is safer to stay at home.)

Illustration

On This Day

1952 - 56-year-old King George VI died Princess Elizabeth became the Queen of England at the age of 25.

1958 - British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at the Munich-Riem airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the Busby Babes, along with a number of supporters and journalists. Twenty-three of the 44 passengers on board the aircraft died in what was to be called The Munich Air Disaster.



Today

Today is National Sickie Day.


English Diary

Sunday

Interesting Fact - Money

According to accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers. British households have some of the biggest debts in the world.

(The average household is £7,900 in the red. despite families tightening their belts to each repay about £355 in 2011, they will still owe about £7,500 by 2013.  The good news is, credit card borrowing fell by five per cent in 2011, leaving the average balance at about £1,000.  So, at least that shows people are becoming a bit smarter about how they borrow.)

Saturday

Interesting Fact - Addiction

According to scientists at the University of Cambridge, abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts.

(Experts have always been unsure whether drugs changed the wiring of the brain or if drug addicts' brains were wired differently in the first place and this study has shown the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters. So you really can blame it on your parents.)


Source

Friday

Interesting Fact - Population

According to the Population Reference Bureau, about 107 billion people have lived on Earth.

(They calculated it using stats and guesses from when Homo sapiens first walked the earth, about 50,000 years ago, and assumed that 50,000 years ago there was a population of 2.  I bet there was a humdinger of an argument about that statistic.)

How many people have ever lived?

Year Population Births / 1,000 Births since previous date

Source: Population Reference Bureau estimates

50,000BC

2

-

-

8,000BC

5,000,000

80

1,137,789,769

AD1

300,000,000

80

46,025,332,354

1200

450,000,000

60

26,591,343,000

1650

500,000,000

60

12,782,002,453

1750

795,000,000

50

3,171,931,513

1850

1,265,000,000

40

4,046,240,009

1900

1,656,000,000

40

2,900,237,856

1950

2,516,000,000

31-38

3,390,198,215

1995

5,760,000,000

31

5,427,305,000

2011

6,215,000,000

23

2,130,327,622

Number who have ever lived: 107,602,707,791