It’s the last Fun Facts of 2016!
Your chances of dying in a car crash are at least 9.5 times lower than dying in a human extinction event.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/armageddon-comma-explained
It takes about an hour for a snowflake to fall from a cloud.
http://sandpointreader.com/how-fast-does-a-snowflake-fall/
The richest 10% hold 76% of the wealth.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/18/pf/wealth-inequality/index.html
The world’s 25 largest defense budgets
A Wyoming Resident’s Vote for Senator is 68 Times as Influential as a Californian’s.
http://utopianist.com/1200
The cost of U.S. healthcare is now 800% higher per person than it was in 1960, even when adjusted for inflation.
http://fiscalpost.com/2016/08/cost-of-u-s-healthcare-now-800-higher-per-person-than-it-was-in-1960-even-when-adjusted-for-inflation/
Tic-tacs are almost pure sugar but due to their weight are allowed to be labeled as zero sugar per serving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac#Ingredients
The real incomes of about two-thirds of households in 25 advanced economies were flat or fell between 2005 and 2014…If the low economic growth of the past decade continues, the proportion of households in income segments with flat or falling incomes could rise as high as 70 to 80 percent over the next decade.
http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/poorer-than-their-parents-a-new-perspective-on-income-inequality
According to the White Paper (WP-16-02) published by the European School of Management and Technology…more than 95 percent [of the] initial Troika loans to Greece went to pay principal and interest on prior Troika loans, or to bailout Greek private banks, or to pay off European private investors and speculators. Less than 10 billion euros was actually spent in Greece.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/24/greek-debt-and-the-new-financial-imperialism/
The average American family had the same amount of wealth in 2013 as it did in 1989.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/the-average-american-family-had-the-same-amount-of-wealth-in-2013-as-it-did-in-1989
Pablo Escobar had so much wealth that he spent $1,000 a week on rubber bands just to keep his mountains of cash neat.
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2016/09/divertimento.html
Air pollution kills more people than malaria and HIV/Aids combined.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/05/toxic-air-pollution-particles-found-in-human-brains-links-alzheimers
Nearly one in every 200 children in the world is a refugee
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/sep/07/nearly-half-of-all-refugees-are-children-unicef-report-migrants-united-nations
Developing countries are home to 89 percent of the world’s 10- to 24-year-olds; by 2020, they will be home to nine out of every 10 people globally.
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1103172936704&ca=9ac07858-2a57-44cf-8e5f-d64552f9967f
More Police Officers have died due to 9/11 related illnesses as a result of their work at ground zero than in the attack itself. The numbers continue to grow.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/thousands-suffer-9-11-illnesses-14-years-article-1.2356281
69 of the world’s top economic entities are corporations rather than countries in 2015.
The world’s top 10 corporations have a combined revenue of more than the 180 “poorest” countries combined including Ireland, Indonesia, Israel, Colombia, Greece, South Africa, Iraq and Vietnam.
http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2016/sep/12/10-biggest-corporations-make-more-money-most-countries-world-combined
Nearly 80% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber-Bosch process in which artificial ammonia is produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
In in the 1970s professional 10 pin bowlers made twice as much as NFL players.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/52rzeg/til_that_in_in_the_1970s_professional_10_pin/
Out-of-pocket [medical] expenses dragged 11.2 million people into poverty in 2015.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160913/NEWS/160919973
In Fiscal Year 2012, DOL recovered $280 million in back pay for 308,000 workers. That amount far exceeded the total lost to criminals in street and highway, bank, gas station and convenience store robberies in 2012.
http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-theft-protect/
Hippo ranching almost came to America.
https://read.atavist.com/american-hippopotamus?no-overlay&preview
Just 3% of American adults own half of guns in the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/us-gun-ownership-survey
When Julius Caesar died he left today’s equivalent of about $270 to each and every Roman citizen.
http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/appian-juliusdeath.asp
San Francisco has less than one-tenth Bangkok’s population but six times as many homeless people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/what-san-francisco-says-about-america.html?smid=fb-share
Racial wage gaps were larger in 2015 than they were in 1979.
http://www.alternet.org/labor/wage-gap-between-black-and-white-americans-40-year-high
Tuberculosis caused 20% of all human deaths in the Western world between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/09/tuberculosis-and-out-of-africa.html
Law enforcement officers beat their significant other at nearly double the national average.
http://www.wikibediya.xyz/2016/09/cops-beat-their-wives-girlfriends-at.html
The Forbes 100 billionaires are collectively as rich as all black Americans combined. At current growth rates, it would take black Americans two hundred and twenty-eight years to have as much wealth as white Americans have today.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/the-widening-racial-wealth-divide?mbid=rss
Police make more arrests for marijuana possession alone than for all violent crimes combined.
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/12/police-arrest-more-people-for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29
Payday loan facilities outnumber Taco Bell and McDonald’s restaurants in the United States.
http://financeography.com/payday-loan-facilities-outnumber-taco-bell-and-mcdonalds-restaurants-in-the-united-states/
The amount of debt held by current and former students in the US is more than the total GDP of 180 countries.
http://financeography.com/these-180-countries-have-a-gdp-lower-than-the-total-u-s-student-loan-debt/
The cost of attending an in-state public university has risen 77% since 2005, yet wages have only risen 24%.
http://financeography.com/the-cost-of-attending-an-in-state-public-university-has-risen-77-since-2005-yet-wages-have-only-risen-24/
Between 2005 and 2015, those under 30 went from owning their home at about a 34.5% rate down to 27.7%. Over the same decade, they went from owing $350 billion in student loans to over $1.3 trillion by the end of the first half of 2016.
http://financeography.com/millennial-home-ownership-shrinks-as-student-debt-grows/
From 1980 to 2014 none of the growth in per-adult national income went to the bottom 50 percent, 32 percent went to the middle class (defined as adults between the median and the 90th percentile), 68 percent went to the top 10 percent, and 36 percent went to the top 1 percent.
http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/economic-growth-in-the-united-states-a-tale-of-two-countries/
1 in 6 adults in the US take antidepressants and sedatives.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4025354/United-States-psychiatric-drugs-1-6-adults-antidepressants-sedatives-study-reveals-experts-warn-just-tip-iceberg.html
America’s overdose epidemic shown in interactive map