Read The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information Online
Authors: Noel Botham
The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information (16 page)
STATISTICS
PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES
Ten percent of frequent fliers say they never check their luggage when flying.
Traveling by air is the safest means of transportation. More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
A car is stolen every thirty seconds in the United States.
The record for the world’s worst driver is a toss-?up between two candidates: first, a seventy-?five-?year-?old man who received ten traffic tickets, drove on the wrong side of the road four times, committed four hit-?and-?run offenses, and caused six accidents—all within twenty minutes on October 15, 1966. Second, a sixty-?two-?year-?old woman who failed her driving test forty times before passing it in August 1970 (by that time, she could no longer afford to buy a car).
Less than 1 percent of all road accidents in Canada involve a moose.
It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.
More than 10 percent of all the salt produced annually in the world is used to de-?ice American roads.
Fifty-?five percent of motorbike accidents happen on the weekend.
Most fatal car accidents happen on a Saturday.
DAILY ROUTINE
Children between the ages of two and seven color, on average, for twenty-?eight minutes every day.
The average adult spends about twelve minutes in the shower.
The average four-?year-?old child asks more than four hundred questions a day.
The average person keeps old magazines for twenty-?nine weeks before they throw them out.
The average person speaks about 31,500 words per day.
The average person spends about two years on the phone in a lifetime.
The average person will spend two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic lights to change.
LEISURE TIME
Fifty-?six percent of the video game market is adults.
Seventy percent of all boats sold are used in fishing.
Ninety percent of women who walk into a department store immediately turn to the right.
In Japan, 20 percent of all publications sold are comic books.
The longest kiss on record lasted 130 hours, 2 minutes.
The world record for carrying a milk bottle on your head is twenty-?four miles.
Halifax, Nova Scotia, has the largest number of bars per capita of anywhere else in the world.
It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7 percent of the world’s population are drunk.
COULD THERE BE A CONNECTION?
About one out of every seventy people who pick their nose actually eats their boogers.
Ninety-?five percent of food poisoning cases are never reported.
CAUSE OF DEATH
You’re more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a poisonous spider.
Thirteen people a year are killed by vending machines falling on them.
Your statistical chance of being murdered is one in twenty thousand.
Odds of being killed by a dog are one in seven hundred thousand.
Odds of being killed by a tornado are one in two million.
Odds of being killed by falling out of bed are one in two million.
Odds of being killed in a car crash are one in five thousand.
Odds of dying in the bathtub are one in one million.
Of the 266 men who have been pope, 33 have died violently.
At 1.6 deaths for every 1,000 persons, Qatar has the lowest death rate in the world.
WEDDED BLISS
Two out of five husbands tell their wives daily that they love them.
About 6 percent of murdered American men are killed by either their wife or girlfriend…or their wife who caught them with their girlfriend.
Forty percent of women have hurled footwear at a man.
Thirty-?five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
Nobody has yet explained satisfactorily why couples who marry in January, February, and March tend to have the highest divorce rates.
Experienced waitresses say that married men tip better than unmarried men.
REPEAT OFFENDERS
One in ten people are arrested every year in the United States.
Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are four to one.
Fifty percent of bank robberies take place on Fridays.
Chances that a burglary in the United States will be solved: one in seven.
About 43 percent of convicted criminals in the United States are rearrested within a year of being released from prison.
Sweden has the least number of murders annually.
The murder rate in the United States is two hundred times greater than in Japan. In Japan, no private citizen can buy a handgun legally.
PUBLIC OPINION
One out of four people do not know what their astrological sign is.
Fifty percent of teenage boys say they would rather be rich than smart.
Fifty-?seven percent of British schoolkids think Germany is the most boring country in Europe.
Sixty-?nine percent of men say they would rather break up with a girl in private than in public.
Seven percent of Americans think Elvis is alive.
Nine percent of Americans report having been in the presence of a ghost.
Only 55 percent of Americans know that the sun is a star.
More than 50 percent of Americans believe in the devil.
Percentage of men who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 58 percent.
Percentage of women who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 85 percent.
Eighty-?two percent of the world’s population believes in an afterlife.
About 5 percent of Americans claim to have talked to the devil personally.
BUT CAN YOU REMEMBER THEIR NAMES?
Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40,320 ways to rearrange the other eight reindeer.
BABY BOOMS
About two hundred babies are born worldwide every minute.
August is the month when most babies are born.
Twelve babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.
The world record for most children to one mother is sixty-?nine children.
You share a birthday with at least nine million other people in the world.
There are about fifteen thousand people in the United States over the age of one hundred.
PLAYING IT SAFE
Statistically, the safest age of life is ten years old.
Summer is statistically the most hazardous season.
You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark.
The percentage of men who wash their hands after using a toilet is 55 percent.
The percentage of women who wash their hands after using a toilet is 80 percent.
In the next seven days, eight hundred Americans will be injured by their jewelry.
Men are 1.6 times more likely to undergo bypass surgery than women.
EQUIPMENT FAILURE
Twenty-?two thousand checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next hour.
An estimated 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.
About 811,000 faulty rolls of thirty-?five millimeters film will be purchased this year.
THIS WAS ALL FOR NOTHING…
Approximately 97 percent of all statistics are made up.