35 Of The Most Fascinating And Mind-Boggling Statistics That People Have Shared Online

"Australia has more kangaroos than humans."

Sophia

• Published in Interesting
• July 12, 2022

If you have lived in this world long enough, you would know that everything just seems to be weaved into numbers. Yes, no matter how hard you try to deny that mathematics, is in fact, NOT the way of life, numbers are literally everywhere, whether you like it or not.

Every single organ in our body, including the trillions of cells we have, are counted in estimates, and down to every strand of our hair—they are all tabulated into an approximate number. Physics and statistics are embedded into literally every single thing in this world, and it's quite impossible for anything to exist at all without some sort of connection to numbers.

Take any two things you can think of that exist in this world, and there will always be a ratio for them. Even the littlest of things or what you think are the most insignificant ones also have numbers associated with them!

Numbers and mathematics themselves enable us to contextualize almost every living and non-living example in this world and the universe as a whole. It shows how something is common, rare, or in-between, as well as how much it is loved and hated by people.

That being said, when someone under the handle Awesomeguy256 asked the question, "What is the most interesting statistic?", people flocked in to join the thread, and it has now gathered over 14k comments. Take a look at some of the most interesting responses below:

1. "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.

-corvettee01

2. "America has about 5% of the worlds population but about 25% of the worlds criminals."

- Gaarakotq

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.

-RamsesThePigeon

4. "There are more trees on planet Earth than there are stars in our galaxy."

- SonoftheBread

5. "Australia has more kangaroos than humans."

- Jiren21

6. "Statistically speaking the average person is a 30 year old Chinese man."

- ohazltn

7. "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.

-TryToHelpPeople

8. "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.

-Munninnu

9. "A black man in St. Louis is more likely to be killed by a police officer than the average US citizen is to get murdered at all."

Whether you think BLM is a bunch of horse s**t or not, Republican or Democrat, or whatever, this stat is pretty interesting. Mind you, a subset of the US population probably doesn't even believe that statistic is true.

-Qubeye

10. "It would take 1.2 million mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood."

- pm_me_anythingg_sfw

11. "Fat leaves our body 86% through the breath."

The other 14% leaves our body through water. - PleiadianJedi

12. "Size-wise, a particle of dust is halfway between a subatomic particle and the Earth."

- anon

13. "That by almost all important measures, the world is a better place to live today than at any other time in human history."

- keenly_disinterested

14. "Wearing a seatbelt correctly reduces chance of front seat passenger fatality due to front end collision by 45%."

Seat belts save lives. For f***s sake people, wear them. Also airbags are more likely to cause injuries rather than prevent them when seat belts are not worn. - danthemanning

15. "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. - TnekKralc

16. "86% of British people live within 8 miles from where they were born."

-Gsurhijrsee

17. "Only 3% of the Earth's water is fresh."

- NantiAboutThat

18. "South America is moving away from Africa at about the same speed your fingernails grow stickman."

- Dave

19. "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%."

- anon

20. "85% of all Americans live within 20 minutes of a Walmart."

- VoltaicParticle

21. "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.

-FlorenceCattleya

22. "25% of California’s air pollution is from China."

- cOOlio-pasta

23. "3-4 billion people on this planet earn $2.50 or less per day."

- chelseatys

24. "Over 1 million earths could fit into the sun."

- lymediseasesucks

25. "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.

-patrickswayzemullet

26. "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. - mattk1017

27. "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."

- ALittleNightMusing

28. "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.

-Missing_panda

29. "The average cumulus cloud weighs more than the Statue of Liberty."

- denny31415926

30. "More Vietnam vets [took their own lives] than [passed away] in the war."

- Fewwordsbetter

31. "80% of Orange Tabby cats are male."

- kitkat_pro

32. "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%.

-RamsesThePigeon

33. "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."

- dudewhatwouldhappen

34. "25% of the earths crust is actually made of iron like in your cereal."

-thirdageofmen

35. "3% of everyone on earth alive in 1939 died in WWII."

- paul99501

It's really fascinating to know how much numbers and maths are weaved into our lives, and no matter how much we hate facing statistics or just about anything that relates to mathematics, we can't deny that it definitely makes this world a lot more interesting than it already is.

Comment down your thoughts, or share this article for all your family and friends to see!

Sophia