In 2006, adult entertainment clocked up $13bn in retail sales in the US – about $50 per adult.

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In April 2009, 63% of U.S. adults had broadband Internet connections in their homes - up from 55% in 2008.

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Regardless of education, income, marital status or age, happier people surveyed watched about 30 % less TV each week than unhappier participants.

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21% of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders.

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GM makes 65% of its sales outside the US.

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There are some 780,000 same sex couples in the US, around 10% of whom are officially married or in civil partnerships.

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The maximum possible jail sentence under American law is 150 years.

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Russia is the world's second-biggest oil exporter and its biggest gas exporter, yet it sends just 3% of its energy exports to oil-hungry Asia.

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Traffic congestion in 2007 forced urban Americans to travel for 4.2 billion extra hours and buy an extra 2.8 billion gallons of petrol.

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The dollar accounts for 65% of the world's foreign-exchange reserves, only slightly less than a decade ago and well ahead of the Euro's 26% share.

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The state-owned Indian Railways is the world’s largest commercial employer with 1.4 million staff.

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Global military expenditure rose by 4% in 2008 to a record $1.46 trillion.

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Almost 60% of all the increase in world output that occurred in 2000-08 happened in developing countries; half of it took place in the BRICs alone.

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Netflix signed up 25% more customers in the past year.

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The relative value of a Mars Bar to a small car - which costs about 20,000 Mars Bars - has remained the same for the past 70 years.

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There were 49,024 airports in the world, as of 2007.

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90% of UK homes have digital TV.

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Europeans place about 40% of all online wagers.

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Shareware, software which requires payments to function properly, only elicits money from 1% of downloaders.

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Only 7% of British children go to private schools, but they account for more than 40% of the intake at Oxford and Cambridge.

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Every year, over 100,000 more Americans leave California than enter it.

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Sony made ¥30 billion ($299 million) on film and television in the year that ended in March 2009, but it lost ¥168 billion on electronics.

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About 2/5th of LinkedIn's members are female.

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Texas is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other American state - 64 compared with California's 51 and New York's 56.

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In 1970, Wall Street attracted 5% of Harvard male graduates; by 1990, the proportion was 15%.

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Fully 43 million Americans, almost 2/3rd of them women, flick through a copy of 'People' magazine each week.

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Only 11% of bosses at big American firms received their undergraduate degrees from an Ivy League college.

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In India, domestic savings amounted to almost 28% of GDP in the year to March 2008.

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Companies around the world spent $459 billion on advertising in 2008.

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American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the 4th quarter of 2008 — almost 80 messages a day.

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The average Twitter user has 126 followers.

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Internet and mobile accounted for 12% of global ad spending in 2008.

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Car and truck airconditioners account for about 5% of annual US motor fuel consumption.

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In 2008, exports from China accounted for only 34% of GDP.

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Airbus delivered a record 483 planes in 2008.

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Energy use per person has remained largely flat over the past 30 years in California, but it has increased by 50% for the rest of America.

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The Lions Club International may be the most global offline business network with over 1.3 million members in more than 200 countries.

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Corporate email archives are growing by 40% a year.

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Venture capitalists invested roughly $300 million in car-related companies in 2008, up from $8 million in 2003.

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In the first quarter of 2009 in America, 20,251 companies filed for bankruptcy - a 52% jump from the same period last year.

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Between 1977 and 2005, 5% of American jobs were destroyed each year - as firms closed, cut back or were taken over by new ones created by start-ups.

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Credit card write-offs in America in 2008 totalled $61 billion.

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