ETCETERA / Bumper Index

Age at which Michelangelo designed St Peter's Cathedral, Rome: 89

Maximum mph at which seeds of the dwarf mistletoe are expelled when ripe: 60

Chickens eaten in China in 1980: 544,000,000

Estimated in 1993: 910,253,000

Yellow Pages of restaurants in central Vancouver, Canada: 35

In Northern Ireland: 7

Average number of ancestors a person has going back over 25 generations: 33,554,432

Annual passengers of the world's first fire-powered air balloon in 1783: 2

Passengers carried in commercial airliners in 1990: 700,000,000

Magnetic resonance imagery scanners installed in USA clinics: 2,000

Years that would be added to the average American's lifetime by the elimination of all cancer: 1.8

Number of sets of the Hong Kong edition of Monopoly sold in South-East Asia last year: 30,000

Average ratio of top executives' pay to workers' pay in Japan: 17.5 to 1

In Britain: 34 to 1

Percentage of UK company directors changing their free cars within three years: 53

Tiger claws counted on South Vietnamese market stalls by an Endangered Species Project investigator: 1,166

Year Esso first used a tiger in its advertisements: 1936

Basic spending by the motor industry each year prolonging the illusion that toxic cars and vans are sensual, sexy and sporty: pounds 424,802,000

Percentage of British company directors who get free petrol with their free car: 84

Percentage of UK Gross National Product given to overseas development aid in 1961: 0.59

In 1991: 0.32

Ski pistes in the Alps: 40,000

Estimated unauthorised communal rubbish dumps in Mexico: 80,000

Supertanker-loads of used UK household appliances dumped annually: 4

Britons due to become subject to the Child Support Agency: 10,000,000

Percentage of motorist intoxication breath tests positive or refused in 1982: 43

In 1992: 16

Year India exploded her first nuclear bomb: 1974

Number of India's 3,119 towns and cities with partial sewage treatment: 209

With complete sewage treatment: 8

Proportion of American residents studying Russian: 1 in 5,795

Factor by which central government education/science spending exceeds defence in mainland China: 2

Factor by which central government defence spending exceeds education in Britain: 2.5

Percentage of independent developing countries under military domination in 1960: 26

In 1989-90: 57

China's ratio of birth rate to death rate in 1960: 20.86 to 25.43. In 1992: 19 to 6.71

British women who have had sexual intercourse with 10 or more men in their life: 888,000

Men, with 10 or more women: 3,540,000

Sources: Deepak Chopra, 'Ageless Body, Timeless Mind' 1993 Crown Publishers; Harpers (USA) Dec 1993/Simons, P 'The Action Plant' Blackwells; Euromonitor Consumer China 1994; ibid; BC Tel/British Telecom; ibid; Davidson JD, & Rees Mogg, W, 'The Great Reckoning' Simon and Schuster; Krantz L. 'America By The Numbers' 1993 Houghton Mifflin USA; ibid; Bruce Sterling, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (USA)/Whole Earth Review, Fall 1994; Dr Larry Brilliant, Whole Earth Review, Fall 1993; Parker Brothers (Mass, USA), cited in Harpers, Dec 1993; Prof Graef Crystal, Seattle Times, July 26, 1992/In Context (USA) 36; Directors' Rewards 1993-4, IOD/Reward; Heather E. Smith, ESP, E-205 Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA 94123; Adbusters magazine (Canada) Vol 2 No3; MEAL 1992/RM (petrol, oils, cars, car dealers & vans); Institute of Directors/Reward Survey of Directors' Salaries; John Madely, Appropriate Technology Vol 19 No 4; ibid; Tourism Concern; Warmer Bulletin 49; RM/Warmer Bulletin 49; Polly Toynbee, BBC News & Current Affairs, 18 Nov 1993; Home Office, Hansard

Parliamentary Reports; ibid; Whole Earth Review; The 1992 Information Please Environmental Almanac (USA); ibid; RM/Krantz, L. 'America By The Numbers' Houghton Mifflin USA; Euromonitor Consumer China 1994 (Y79bn/Y37.8bn)/RM; Whitaker's Almanack 1994/Department for Education Nov 1992 press release (1992-3)/RM; Sivard, R, World Military

and Social Expenditures, World Priorities Institute annual repors (USA)/Seager, J, 'Earth

Follies', Earthscan; ibid; Euromonitor Consumer China 1994; ibid; Anne M Johnson et al,

Sexual Lifestyles and HIV Risk, Nature 360-6403/Whitaker's Almanack 1994/RM; ibid.