Back in 1820 we had about 1 billion people here on this globe. Today that is approximately how many personal friends Mark Zuckerberg has on Facebook. 92 years later (this coming July), we’ll go beyond 7 billion. That’s a lot of bodies and that was fast; just some stuff I didn’t know and now you do.
The following is some odd sox info about where we live. For the most we fiddle about, exist and survive on this planet, not really knowing where and what, when and why. We take way too much stuff for granted and some with a tad of ignorance. So we might appear oblivious, but we also know that is not true. We are busy with a lot of stuff in our daily lives and that’s one of the reasons we forget Greenland is the largest island on earth and that it spans 2 million square miles of snow-balls and ice-cubes. We also forget that Greenland is melting, and I’m not sure if I like that, but it’s a good thing to know anyway; don’t you think? Running out of ice-cubes is serious business, so we should be worried.
Other stimulating “what in the world” stuff to know: We have 238 nations with China feeding the most at 1,3 billion, USA with a grand mix of 313 million, Germany with 81,3 million, the UK 63 million, Sweden with 9,1 million and Hans Christian Andersen’s Denmark weighs in at 5,5 million - just to name a few. Another interesting fact is that this blog has now readers from over 40 of those 238 nations and counting. To me that is such an awesome statistic, so thank you.
The smallest country is located in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Australia. It’s the Pitcairn Islands. They listed the peak of their population at 233 in 1937. Today that number is 48, with only one phone, but 17 party-lines (bring out the balloons). Total land-mass is slightly bigger than our living-room at 50 square miles and Pitcairn Islands is a leftover speck of the British Empire and has a zero growth rate (birth-control at its best).
The world is about 4,55 billion years old, so why am I whining about my upcoming 66. birthday? The highest point is Mount Everest at 8,598 meters or 5.4 miles. Greatest ocean depth is 10,924 meters or 7 miles and called the Mariana Trench located in the Pacific Ocean.
Did you know that 95 countries are islands with no borders to other nations? See, we don’t know stuff like this, but in a perverse kind of way, isn’t it fascinating? I mean we live here, but how much do we really know about where we live? Not a heck of a lot – so I’m here to fill you in; service at its best.
Though known as The Magic Kingdom, Disneyland is not represented in the United Nations – where’s the fairness in that? When did the UN become anti-rodents? Racism at its lowest level.
We live around 1,500 potentially active volcanoes, where 500 (nice even numbers) have erupted in historical time; that would be from the day I was born, but a bit longer. Approximately 500 million brave (silly?) people live within these volcanoes' striking distance; I can only assume they have at least two Lava Lamps each.
12% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin Chinese. 4.85% hablar Española or something close. Only 4.83% have English as their main tongue, and I found only six individuals who still speak Pig-Latin (a language that has nothing to do with communication between swine). Foul language is not even on the list – and I checked several *&^%$# times.
12% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin Chinese. 4.85% hablar Española or something close. Only 4.83% have English as their main tongue, and I found only six individuals who still speak Pig-Latin (a language that has nothing to do with communication between swine). Foul language is not even on the list – and I checked several *&^%$# times.
33.35% are Christians, Catholics, etc., 22.43% Muslims, 13.78% are Hindu and .21% is of the Jewish faith – just to name a few. Can we assume that the rest are atheists and Buddhists and that Hara Krishna finally got tired of the airport thing or ran out of tambourines?
Worldwide 252 babies are born every minute – that’s a lot and a bit scary, when compared to only 107 deaths every minute. Seems like one has to slow down and the other has to speed up. I mean, aren’t we running out of room soon?
Not including transvestites and cross-dressers, there are more women than men, and I’m fine with that. It really surprised me that the median age worldwide is 28.4. Life expectancy is 69.73 years for women and 65.59 for men. So with that in mind, this might be the last blog-post from me as I am only minutes away from the end of my expected lifespan. It has been nice, it really has - stupid stat.
I really don’t know why Jytte Knudsen turned my advances down six times before she finally agreed to be my girl-friend. Then I found out that she was only after my lunch money, so I ended it 3 days later, sad and financially broke. Very confusing and devastating; something a 7 year old shouldn’t have to go through. Yeah, I know, not a world thing, but still weighing heavy on my mind, even after all these years. But I feel much better now.
We have a known oil-reserve of about 1,468 trillion barrels of crude. We use about 85 million barrels daily, so you figure it out yourself. 1,2 billion land-line phones are in use, and some of them are always busy. Cell or mobile phones, as some calls them, are reaching 5.4 billion and Internet users are up around 2.1 billion.
See, this is all really cool stuff to bring up in any decent bar. You tell me if this is not the most original pick-up line: “Did you know that worldwide we have 43,983 airports? And even more fascinating: Atlanta, USA, is the busiest airport ever, with over 89 million passengers sifting through annually – hey where are you going? I got a bunch of other fascinating stuff to tell you – hey, stop, don’t leave so soon!”
Besides that we have approximately 64 million miles of roadway (for the fans of metric, that’s about 100 million kilometers, which is also a long way), there are so much about the world we live in that we do not pay attention to. But after a few hours with the nose on the monitor and checking out CIA’s World Factbook on-line, it’s amazing how refreshing that really is; “perspective” comes to mind.
And that is just about the world around us. Not to make you uncomfortable, but how well do we know our own bodies? Do you know how they function, what some of all those thousands of organs are called, what they do and how we should take good care of them? If fairly normal, we really don’t know and isn’t that weird in a giggling kind of way? Maybe someday I’ll blog stuff I don’t know about the body; not my body, of course - somebody else’s body. Any volunteers? Raise your hand, either one of them – or both if you can...
See you next Monday, if I beat that "life-expectancy" - thing.
COMING SOON:
LIFE AS IT REALLY IS
first year of blogging
200+ page paperback with all the posts from my first year as a BlogHead
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