If you read Bored Panda, you know we like data. If we’re doing a story on a woman banning her mother-in-law from her house, we look at what experts have to say on family relationships. If we’re writing about employees quitting on a demanding boss, we present surveys on worker needs.
Numbers help us humans to contextualize individual examples and show us how common or rare, loved or hated something is in a broader sense.
Interested in the big picture, they give us the big picture, Reddit user Awesomeguy256 posted a question to the platform, asking its users “What is the most interesting statistic?” Since then, people have left over 14,000 comments under it, many of which share fascinating information on everything from economics to the animal kingdom. Here are some of the best ones.
#1
More Vietnam vets [took their own lives] than [passed away] in the war.
Image credits: Fewwordsbetter
#2
80% of Orange Tabby cats are male.
Image credits: kitkat_pro
#3
Hold up your hands and clap them together.
Wait one second, then do it again.
If you could plot the distance between the first clap and the second clap, it would be more than 800 kilometers.
This is because the Earth is moving around the sun, the sun is moving around the center of the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the Virgo Supercluster, and the Virgo Supercluster is barreling through the universe. When you add up all the velocities and compare the result to the cosmic microwave background (which is the closest thing we have to a universal frame of reference), it comes out to about 800 kilometers per second.
In the time it took you to read this, you’ve traveled farther than you’ll ever walk in your life.
Image credits: RamsesThePigeon
#4
Statistically speaking the average person is a 30 year old Chinese man.
Image credits: ohazltn
#5
Australia has more kangaroos than humans.
Image credits: Jiren21
#6
The tallest giraffe ever measured (George) was 19 feet (5.8m) tall.
The longest crocodile ever measured (Lolong) was 20.25 feet (6.17m) long
So take the tallest giraffe you’ve ever seen, and then add a little, and you’ve got the biggest crocodile ever measured reliably with a tape measure down its back.
Herpetologists agree that sightings of crocodiles up to 23 feet are not unreasonable, but they’re very hard to capture when they’re that big. Therefore, no absolutely reliable numbers.
Image credits: FlorenceCattleya
#7
Sharks are older than trees. Sharks are at least 400 million years old, trees are sitting at 350 million years.
Edit: Also another fun fact, sharks are so successful when it comes to evolution and long term survival because of a trait called “Adaptive Radiation”, which is a huge increase of species diversity in a short period of time. Modern sharks stem from an adaptive radiation that happened during the Jurassic Period about 200 million years ago. One of the newest modern sharks is the hammerhead, coming in at around 50 million years.
Image credits: corvettee01
#8
That by almost all important measures, the world is a better place to live today than at any other time in human history.
Image credits: keenly_disinterested
#9
The richest 1% dudes in the world have more wealth than the rest of the planet.
The world’s 8 richest men have as much money as the poorest half, 3,6 billions people.
Image credits: Munninnu
#10
The average cumulus cloud weighs more than the Statue of Liberty.
Image credits: denny31415926
#11
Britain had more planes at the end of the Battle of Britain than at the beginning, because they were being made at such an incredible rate that it surpassed the losses.
Image credits: ALittleNightMusing
#12
If you’re in a group of twenty-three people, there’s a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday.
If you’re in a group of seventy people, that probability jumps to over 99%.
Image credits: RamsesThePigeon
#13
3-4 billion people on this planet earn $2.50 or less per day.
Image credits: chelseatys
#14
I found out at a conference last week that 5 billion people don’t have access to safe surgery.
It really shocked me. That’s 5 out of every 7 people in the world.
Image credits: Missing_panda
#15
25% of California’s air pollution is from China.
Image credits: cOOlio-pasta
#16
Til the world record for children born to one woman is 69. She had 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.
Image credits: TnekKralc
#17
America has about 5% of the worlds population but about 25% of the worlds criminals.
Image credits: Gaarakotq
#18
3% of everyone on earth alive in 1939 died in WWII.
Image credits: paul99501
#19
South America is moving away from Africa at about the same speed your fingernails grow.
Image credits: stickmanDave
#20
Only 3% of the Earth’s water is fresh.
Image credits: NantiAboutThat
#21
It would take 1.2 million mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood.
Image credits: pm_me_anythingg_sfw
#22
If all the humans alive right now lived in the same density per square mile as New York City, we could all live in the state of Texas.
Image credits: dudewhatwouldhappen
#23
Over 1 million earths could fit into the sun.
Image credits: lymediseasesucks
#24
Size-wise, a particle of dust is halfway between a subatomic particle and the Earth.
Image credits: anon
#25
86% of British people live within 8 miles from where they were born.
Image credits: Gsurhijrsee
#26
Fat leaves our body 86% through the breath. The other 14% leaves our body through water.
Image credits: PleiadianJedi
#27
It takes roughly 170,000 years for photons from the Sun’s core to reach the convection zone of the photosphere where it is released out into space. In other words, the Sun light you see is hundreds of thousands of years old.
Image credits: mattk1017
#28
The population of Ireland has not yet recovered half-way from the famine of 150 years ago.
The immediate effects of the famine saw a great many people [perished] from starvation or disease and others emigrate to avoid the same fate. The longer term effects created a breakdown in the social order which forced emigration and a consequent 100 year decline in the population. It’s only in the last 50 years that the population has started to grow again.
Image credits: TryToHelpPeople
#29
If you and your spouse both have a divorce under your belt , and one (or both) of you have MORE than one divorce under your belt, the failure rate of your marriage is 93%.
Image credits: anon
#30
85% of all Americans live within 20 minutes of a Walmart.
Image credits: VoltaicParticle
#31
There are more trees on planet Earth than there are stars in our galaxy.
Image credits: SonoftheBread
#32
80 per cent of 80 year old males or older will have suffered or will face prostate cancer at some point in his life.
Eighty. Percent.
#33
25% of the earths crust is actually made of iron like in your cereal.
Image credits: thirdageofmen
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