Facts & Trends

Percentage by which New York City’s homeless-shelter population increased under Bloomeberg: 65 Portion of the city’s shelter population who are children: 2/5 ...

A dedicated graffiti zone was set up at the Great Wall of China, in the hope it would stop visitors from scratching their names on the historic barrier.  Most of the graffiti on the wall, said the Chinese media, is ...

Bird calls, after firefighters in Idaho rushed into a burning building when they heard voices calling “Help! Fire!” only to discover a pair of “talking” parrots.  “There was nobody besides the birds inside,” said one fireman. “Smart birds.” ...

A New York City woman set off 21 bug bombs inside her apartment, causing an explosion that collapsed her five-story building, injuring 14 people ...

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

. . . painless budget cuts, after 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani of Pittsburgh calculated that government agencies could save $370 million a year in ink and paper costs by printing all documents in the thinner Garamond typeface instead of Times New Roman ...

About 25 percent of the world's population, or 1.6 billion people, do not have electricity in their homes ...

Percentage change in the per-capita consumption of alcohol by Britons since 1960: +102 ...

Neopagans in Iceland are erecting a temple dedicated to the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Frigg for the first time in over 1,000 years.  The temple will be built by the Asatru movement, which was founded in the 1970s to revive ...

Yearly odds of a U.S. student being killed at school: 1 in 3 million ...