Facts & Trends

The graduating class of 2015 is the most indebted in history, owing a total of $56 billion in student loans.  About 71 percent of college students graduating this year took out loans, at an average of $35,051 each.  In 1996, ...

What happened to the Conservatives’ promise to roll back the surveillance state? said James Ball. The British are already the most-spied-upon people on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of video cameras recording our comings and goings. Junior-level bureaucrats have ...

Percentage of British businessmen who travel with their teddy bears: 25 Percentage of British men who say they share  “all their secrets” with their teddy bears: 15 ...

Portion of college students who believe alcohol improves their ability to tell jokes: 3/4 ...

Estimated number of people held in forced labor worldwide: 21,000,000 Portion who are 18 or younger: 1/4 ...

A Pennsylvania girl's Sweet 16 party was ruined after her celebration was showered with poop, apparently dumped from a passing airplane.  Jacinda Cambray and 40 guests were partying in her family's backyard when the brown liquid began raining down.  "We'd ...

A Danish politician is trying to stand out from his rivals in national elections by appearing in X-rated campaign posters wearing nothing more than a cowboy hat, a holster, and a determined gaze.  John Erik Wagner, 51, who is running ...

Human waste from the roughly 700 climbers who scale Mount Everest every year poses a serious health issue on the slopes, the head of Nepal’s mountaineering association warned on March 3. He urged the government to push climbers to dispose ...

Of the approximately 11,000 people murdered with guns in the U.S. in 2012, just 322 were killed by an assault weapon or any kind of rifle.The vast majority of killers used handguns ...

The Pew Research Center forecast that by 2050 the number of Muslims globally will nearly equal the number of Christians. Here is how major religions are projected to grow from 2010 to 2050: Islam: +73% Christianity: +35% Hinduism: +34% Judaism: ...