In 2001, 89% of American households gave to charity.

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Processing paper tickets costs airlines $10, whereas processing e-tickets just costs $1.

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In 2008, 50% of the adult population in the US said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months - up from 47% in 2002.

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Sales of netbooks - small, low-cost laptops - leapfrogged from 182,000 in 2007 to 11m in 2008. They are set to touch 21m in 2009.

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There are about 75,000 active contributors on Wikipedia.

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More than 13 million Facebook users update their statuses at least once each day.

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Americans collectively gave away $306 billion to charity in 2007. That was a three-fold increase from the amount donated in 1965.

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The average Facebook user has 100 friends.

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Rolls Royce sold no cars in December 2008; it sold 29 cars in December 2007.

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60% of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it.

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The world's current car production capacity is about 94m every year - about 34m more than the car industry manages to sell.

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35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site, more than quadruple the amount that did in February 2005.

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In America, 90% of new cars are bought with some form of financing.

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In 2006, nearly 3 million students enrolled in higher education institutions outside their own countries - a rise of over 50% since 2000.

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Men - at least British men - are most romantic aged 53.

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Since Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1996, its share price has grown roughly 20-fold.

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Gun ownership per person in Finland is the third highest in the world.

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In Iceland, 96% of women go to university, in Australia it is 91%.

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Wii players used only 2% more energy than players of regular computer games.

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Forty years after colour TV was introduced to the UK there are still 34,700 people with black and white television licences.

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An American girl aged between three and 11 has, on average, 10 Barbie dolls in her toy box.

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In a lifetime, the average meat eater will chew through five cows, 20 pigs, 29 sheep and 760 chickens. That's a small farm each.

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More Americans are behind bars than citizens of any country. Some 2.3 million Americans - or 1% of the total adult population - are currently in jail.

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UK's "ecological footprint" - the land and sea needed to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste - is 5.3 hectares per person.

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JK Rowling made more than £5 every second last year.

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Latvia has the highest cigarette tax in Europe, at 80% of the price. The UK level is 77%.

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