HOBSON'S CHOICE
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Your support makes all the difference.Number of teenagers in the world:
800 million
Number of national varieties of Barbie doll, the latest additions being Austrian and Moroccan:
30
Amount, at conservative estimates, that merchandising from the Star Wars films has earned since 1977:
$4.5bn
Total amount of money held in offshore bank accounts in 1993, five times the sum available to the world's central banks:
$5 trillion
Amount Germany loses annually in tax revenue to undeclared personal savings held in offshore bank accounts:
$15bn
Percentage of Jersey's revenue which comes from its financial sector, which includes 45 registered banks with deposits of at least pounds 90bn:
90
Average cost of a Hollywood film made by one of the major studios in 1998, including marketing costs:
$75.6m
Average number of rounds of theatrical blanks used in a Hollywood crime or action film, at a cost of $65 per 100 rounds:
300,000
Cost, per day, to simulate a hurricane for a Hollywood film:
$10,000
Cost, per day, to rent a trained kangaroo for a Hollywood film:
$600
Cost, per day, to rent a trained cockroach, 30,000 of which were hired from Animals For Hollywood for the teen horror film The Craft in 1996:
$25
Amount paid recently by a collector for a 8cm-long stag beetle at Waku Waku Land, an insect speciality shop in Tokyo: $90,000
Average salary of an American dentist in 1987:
$76,000
Average salary of an American dentist in 1996, by which time the number of dentists had increased by 20 per cent:
$124,000
According to the Canadian Medical Association, percentage of advice given in medical advice columns in Canadian newspapers in 1995 which was inappropriate for elderly readers:
50
Percentage of advice given in medical advice columns in 1995 which was dangerous or potentially life-threatening for elderly readers:
28
Grams of salt consumed by British adults every day, twice the amount recommended by the British government and 10 times the amount recommended by the US government:
10
SOURCES: SLATE, WORLD TODAY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, REUTERS, HEAT, NEWSWEEK, TIME
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