Girls only
Polish village Miejsce Odrzanskie was reported not to have had a single boy born in the past decade, though 12 girls have been born in the same period. However, such an imbalance is far from a freak occurrence:
— Assuming a 50-50 chance of a baby being male or female, the probability of 12 girls born in succession is one in 4,096. Given that there are 10,000 parishes in Poland, you would expect at any one time for there to be two to three whose last dozen births were all female.
— There is an equal chance that 12 boys will be born in succession.
Powerless
A million British people were reported to have been left without electricity when a gas power station and wind farm both failed. How does that compare with people left without power in some of history’s biggest outages?
India, July 2012 | 620m |
Indonesia, August 2019 | 100m |
Southern Brazil, March 1999 | 97m |
Italy, September 2003 | 56m |
Eastern US/Canada, August 2003 | 55m |
And in Britain: | |
Great Storm, 1987 | 1.5m |
Miners’ strike, 1972 | 1.2m |
Banged up
The government is to review prison sentences. How does our incarceration rate of 140 per 100,000 compare with that of other countries?
HIGHEST | |
US | 655 |
El Salvador | 615 |
Turkmenistan | 552 |
Virgin Islands | 542 |
Thailand | 512 |
Cuba | 510 |
LOWEST | |
Guinea-Bissau | 10 |
Central African Republic | 16 |
Republic of Congo | 27 |
India | 33 |
Oman | 36 |
Nigeria | 36 |
(England and Wales ranks at number 112 out of 223)
Source: World Prison Brief
Dropped off
What does it cost to drop off a passenger directly outside our biggest airports?
Heathrow | Free |
Gatwick | Free |
Stansted | £4 for 10 mins |
Luton | £4 for 13 mins |
Manchester | £3 for 5 mins |

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