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Your support makes all the difference.Percentage of world population that is literate: 74
Number of illiterates: 1,400,000,000
Estimated years bomb-test polluted Runit Island in the Pacific must remain uninhabited: 25,000
Aircraft operated by world's armed forces: 60,000
By the world's civil airlines: 62,000
Percentage of Earth's fresh water in the Antarctic ice sheet: 90
Cost of America's Landsat satellite lost during launch: dollars 220,000,000
Cost of Aston Martin Vantage car: pounds 177,600
Sales of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park in 24 countries: 7,000,000
Estimated wildcat gold prospectors in the Brazilian Amazon basin: 400,000
Estimated foxhunters in Britain: 200,000
Annual tobacco-related deaths in developing countries: 1,000,000
Predicted by 2025: 7,000,000
Square miles of forest in Malaysia in 1900: 125,000
In 1992: 27,000
Refugees and displaced people in Bosnia: 2,280,000
Daily visitors to Obala art gallery in besieged Sarajevo: 100
Marinas on the mud flats of the Solent: 26
Sources: Vital Signs, Worldwatch Institute/Earthscan; ibid; Joni Seager: Earth Follies; MoD/Aviation Data Inc; ibid; New Scientist 1892; New Scientist 1985; Autocar & Motor; Paris Match 2318; Geographical LXV-11; Cobham Resource Consultants (1990); OU/WHO; ibid; Guinness Book of Answers '93; ibid; UNHCR; Kate Hoey MP/Calum MacDonald MP/Malcolm Wicks MP (New Statesman & Society); New Scientist 1890.
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