50 facts that should change the world
the article above lists fifty sentences that contain truth
that should move those who read them and cause them to want to
do something to cause change.
here are some that stood out to me the most...
22 THE US owes the United Nations $1bn in unpaid dues.
Yet it spends the same amount on its military program every 23 hours.
23 TWENTY-SIX million people voted in the 2001 UK General Election.
More than 32 million votes were cast in the first series of Pop Idol.
28 AMERICANS spend £5.6bn on pornography every year –
the same amount their government spends on foreign aid.
30 IN 2001, 13.2 million Americans and 2.5 million Britons had plastic surgery.
31 BRAZIL has more Avon ladies than members of its armed forces.
Physical beauty is so highly prized that calling someone vain is a compliment.
34 MORE than 70 per cent of the world’s population has never
heard a dial tone. In Africa just one in 40 people has a phone.
38 MORE people die from suicide than in armed conflicts.
In the past 45 years, suicide rates have grown by 60 per cent worldwide.
SIXTY-ONE per cent of British teenagers believe aliens have landed on Earth,
while 39 per cent have any belief in Christianity.
49 IN China, as a result of the preference for sons over daughters
and the country’s one-child-per-family law,
there are 44 million fewer women than men.
43 MORE people can identify the golden arches of McDonald’s
than the Christian cross. The same goes for the Shell oil logo,
the Mercedes badge and the Olympic rings.
5 THERE are 44 million child laborers in India, some working 16-hour days.
17 GOLFER Tiger Woods is the world’s highest-paid sportsman,
earning £44million a year, including £30,000 a day
for wearing Nike caps – which Thai workers get £2.20 a day to make.
2 BLACK men born in the US stand a one-in-three chance of going to jail.
For white men the odds are one in 17.
3 ONE in five of the world’s population – 1.25 billion people –
is undernourished.
11 THERE are 27 million slaves in the world.
12 A THIRD of the world’s population is at war.
In 2002, 30 countries were fighting in 37 armed conflicts –
a combined population of 2.29 billion people.
13 THE UK has the second-highest rate of teen pregnancies
in the developed world, behind the US. There are 30.8 births
for every 1,000 teenagers. Teenage mothers are twice as likely to live in poverty.
