In fact

January 22, 2006
  • 58,000 Britons still have a black and white television. [The Times, 25th November 2005]
  • The Afghan Cricket Federation has 12,000 members, up from 500 in 1995. [The Guardian, 10th December 2005]
  • One of the winners in the recent Palestinian primaries uses the nickname Hitler. Around 25 PLO activists have adopted the name Hitler or Abu Hitler. [IRIS]
  • The Purpose-Driven Life, a Christian advice book published in 2002, is the bestselling hardback in US history, with more than 25m copies sold. [The Economist, 3rd December 2005]
  • Since Ted Heath and until Cameron, every Tory leader apart from Iain Duncan Smith has been state-educated. [New Republic, 2nd December 2005]
  • 38 per cent of the 2m people in Britain on incapacity benefit cite mental health problems. [The Guardian, 5th December 2005]
  • Of the 1,800 people detained during the French riots, 120 didn't have French nationality. [Libération, 9th November 2005]
  • Britain and France, followed by the US and Russia/USSR, have fought the most international wars since 1946. [Human Security Report 2005]
  • Ali Daei is the all-time leading goalscorer in inter-national football. So far he has scored 102 goals in his 133 games for Iran. [Fifa]
  • Mongolia has roughly the same population as Wales. [The Guardian, 21st November 2005]
  • If all the Lego in the world were divided up evenly, we'd get 30 pieces each. [Dad Stuff by Steve Caplin and Simon Rose]
  • Britain's skilled-worker brain drain problem is the worst in the world. Over 1.44m graduates have left the UK, outweighing our 1.26m immigrant graduates, leaving a net loss of 200,000. [The Independent, 25th October 2005]