An estimated 50% of all gold ever mined on Earth came from a single plateau in South Africa: Witwatersrand.
100 Mind-Blowing Estimated Facts
There’s a bar in Yukon that serves a “Sourtoe cocktail.” It consists of a shot of whisky with a human toe floating in the glass. An estimated 60,000 people have had it.
From 1937 to 1953, NBC’s Today Show had a chimpanzee co-host named J. Fred Muggs. It is estimated he brought in the network around $100 million.
The total population of insects is estimated to be a billion times greater than that of the human population.
There are 30 times more trees on Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way. It’s estimated that there are 100 billion stars and 3 trillion trees.
The age of the Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years. The oldest stars in the Milky Way, found in globular clusters, are 13.6 billion years old.
Selfies now cause more deaths than shark attacks. It is estimated there are 28 selfie-related deaths per year, with the leading cause being heights.
Electrons might live forever. Scientists have estimated the minimum lifetime of the electron is about 6.6 × 1028 years – this is 66,000 ‘yottayears’. Since this is about 5 quintillion times the age of the Universe, even if electrons don’t live forever, they may as well do!
A cumulus cloud weighs an estimated 1.1 million pounds, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Kennedy Space Centre, dubbed Florida’s Space Coast, is the only travel destination with a beach that doubles as a launch pad. Artemis 3 is currently planning a lunar landing mission to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon, with an estimated launch date in 2025.
A book called ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ by Marcel Proust contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters, making it the longest book in the world. The title translates to “Remembrance of Things Past”.
Millions of trees were estimated to be planted by squirrels that forgot their buried nuts. Dreamworks’ Ice Age franchise may not be fully accurate, but it sure got one thing right: Squirrels love burying their nuts.
Muhammad is the most popular name in the world. The most used name in the world is believed to be Muhammad with an estimated 150 million men who share this name. This is largely thanks to the Muslim practice of naming their first-born sons after the prophet.
The queens in ant colonies live for around 30 years. This was observed by keeping queen ants in captivity. On average, they lived for almost 29 years. However, it is estimated that they can live much longer in the wild with a full colony.
There are 1 million ants for every person on the planet. It is believed that the total number of ants in the world is equal to the weight of all the people on the planet. A BBC documentary commented that there are an estimated 100 trillion ants on Earth.
The Indiana University library is constantly sinking. It sinks over half an inch annually. This is because engineers failed to calculate and include the estimated weight of all the books that would be placed inside the building.
The most followed sport in the world is soccer. An estimated 4 billion fans are active in supporting the soccer community. This is more than half of the total world population.
90% of the Earth’s organisms are insects. Out of the estimated 1.5 million species of organisms on the planet, insects take up ⅔ of that amount.
If you’re murdered in the U.S., there’s a 1-in-3 chance police will never identify your killer. An estimated 2,000 serial killers have been at large in the U.S. since 2017. That’s one for chilling WTF facts.
The biggest chocolate rabbit in the world is over 4,000 kg heavy. The largest chocolate rabbit was sculpted by Equipe da Casa do Chocolate in 2017. It was 4,000 times the size of an average chocolate bunny and had an estimated 21.2 million calories.
Americans eat enough burgers to circle the Earth over 32 times. Americans eat an estimated 13 billion hamburgers each year, which is enough to go around the Earth more than 32 times.
There are twice as many kangaroos in Australia as there are people. The kangaroo population is estimated at 40 million.
Bats save the U.S. agriculture industry an estimated $3.7 to $53 billion annually by eating pest insects.
There are an estimated 8.7 million species of living things on Earth, and humans are only one of them. This number includes animals, plants, fungi, protozoa, and algae.
THERE USED TO BE THOUSANDS OF BLUE WHALES IN THE ANTARCTIC. It’s estimated that there were over 225,000 Antarctic blue whales before their exploitation in the 1900s. Today, there are estimated to be less than 2,000 Antarctic blue whales left in the world.
FORESTS ONCE COVERED JUST UNDER HALF OF THE EARTH’S LAND. The total number of trees has fallen by nearly half since the start of human civilisation and it’s estimated that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year. That’s around 100,000 square kilometres of forest, or roughly one football pitch every two seconds.
An estimated 1,000 axolotls remain in the wild. That’s a worryingly small number considering how many eggs are laid by each breeding pair.
Forbes estimated in 2011 that Scrooge McDuck was worth $44.1 billion.
Seven out of ten US youths would fail to qualify for military service. While many of them fail because of health reasons such as obesity, many others are disqualified because of poor education. Others fail because of prescription medication they take or lifestyle choices such as tattoos or certain piercings. It’s estimated that only one per cent of US youths are eligible to join the military and are interested in doing so.
The most common wild bird in the world isn’t the sparrow or blue jay—it’s the red-billed quelea, which lives in Africa and has an estimated population of 1.5 billion.
Amazon Prime Members Stats Just Keep Climbing. Launched as a membership service for Amazon patrons in 2005, Prime boasts 214.43 million international users and remains the most-visited U.S. multi-platform in the U.S., serving 98 million active users every month. Niches driving Prime traffic are Amazon Music (16.46 million users) and Prime Video (46.3 million). Members spent $1400 annually on goods and services driven by offers of discounted pricing and free shipping. Expanding its media influence, Amazon Studios has begun to rack up Emmy Award nominations for original productions available only to members. During Covid lockdowns, an estimated 37% of Prime members bought food and beverages from Amazon.
We only keep 1 out of every 10 apps we try. It is estimated that about 80-90 per cent of the apps we install are deleted in the long term. It seems users are picky with what they want to use their limited storage for!
Digital tech is good for the environment. It is estimated that digital technology could reduce global carbon emissions by 20% by 2030. That’s equal to getting rid of 100% of China’s emissions plus an additional 1.5 billion tons!
An estimated $1-$3 is spent per year by each taxpayer to remove graffiti.
Those breathtaking special effects you see in movie blockbusters? Well, they’re (partly) thanks to Linux. An estimated 90% of Hollywood visual effects rely on Linux at some stage in the production pipeline.
Ubuntu is the world’s most popular Linux-based desktop operating system. It boasts an estimated 20 million users worldwide. Linux market share is estimated at 2-3% of all desktop computer use.
Cost of Redeveloping the Linux Kernel: Redeveloping version 2.6.0 of the Linux kernel in a traditional, non-open source way was estimated to cost around $612 million in 2004. Another study in 2006, funded by the European Union, suggested that redoing version 2.6.8 would be even more expensive, at about $1.14 billion. These estimates show how much money could be saved by using the open-source approach of developing Linux.
The likelihood that a cybercrime entity is detected and prosecuted in the U.S. is estimated at around 0.05 per cent. (World Economic Forum)
Worldwide cybercrime costs are estimated to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. (Cybersecurity Ventures)
The cost of downtime to medical organisations due to attacks is estimated to be $15.5 million in 2023. (Comparitech)
Budget: The annual budget of the NSA is classified, but it was estimated to be around $10.8 billion in 2013. This funding supports its extensive operations and technological advancements.
Budget Comparison: While the NSA is one of the largest intelligence agencies, the CIA has occasionally surpassed it in budget. In 2013, the CIA had a budget of $14.7 billion, compared to the NSA’s estimated $10.8 billion.
Cheese rolling is a sport: Yes, you read it correctly, cheese rolling is a sport. It is estimated that the sport started in the 15th century. Once a year, competitors compete in a cheese rolling competition at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire. During these competitions, participants chase a 3.2-kilogram (7lb) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill. It is certainly a sport at risk, but it is a tradition not to be missed in the region. The winner, the one crossing the finishing line first, wins the wheel of cheese as their prize.
Multilingual Metropolis: London has more than 8 million residents who converse in a variety of languages. It is estimated that around 300 languages are spoken in the city.
It costs more than a cent to make a cent: In the US, it costs roughly 2 cents to make a 1-cent coin. For a nickel (5 cents), it’s 7.5 cents. These extra costs quickly add up. In 2018 (when the most recent figures were available), it’s estimated that cent production cost the US taxpayer an extra $85.5 million and nickel production an extra $33.5 million.
Billions of funds are transferred each year: In 2021, money transfers to low and middle-income countries reached US $605 billion according to the latest World Bank data. It’s estimated that around one billion people worldwide (or 1 in 7 people) are involved in international money transfers, with around 200 million migrant workers sending money back home and 800 million people receiving it.
Each Dollar Amount Has Its Lifespan: Money doesn’t last forever, but some dollar bills have a longer life cycle than others. According to the U.S. Currency Education Program, a $10 bill has the shortest lifespan while a $100 bill has the longest. Here’s the estimated lifespan of the different denominations: $1: 5.8 years, $5: 5.5 years, $10: 4.5 years, $20: 7.9 years, $50: 8.5 years, $100: 15 years.
China has been the largest market for industrial robots since 2013, with 140,492 units installed in 2019. Although the sector was slowed down by the pandemic, it was estimated that China has already recovered from its “industrial slump.”