EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers you a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
3 – The number of limbs that Turkish man Atilla Kavdir had replaced in a transplant last weekend. The 34-year-old became the first person in the world to have three limbs attached at once. Sadly, the right leg that he had attached was removed again a day later due to tissue problems.
90 – The number of cities worldwide which enjoy ‘Healthy City’ status from the World Trade Organisation. As of last Monday, Cork is one of them.
19 – The time, in days, between the presentation of Ireland’s 2012 Budget plans to members of the Bundesrat and the time it was actually announced in the Dáil. This week a group of TDs travelled to Germany to meet their counterparts and discuss how the leak occurred.
1 – The number of racehorses possessing a ‘speed gene’ around 300 years ago – a gene which was later passed to the world’s entire stock of racehorses, according to the findings of research at UCD.
27 – All 27 member states of the EU have signed up to the controversial ACTA treaty, which commits governments to doing whatever they can to stop people from circumventing copyright protection mechanisms.
984,251,969 – On Wednesday the Irish state repaid an Anglo Irish Bank bond worth €1.25 billion. There are many things you could buy with that money – including 984,251,969 copies of the legislation that Seán Sherlock will soon be introducing on internet copyright protection. That legislation will cost €1.27 if you buy it from the government’s Publications Office on Molesworth St. (Downloads, we should point out, will be free.)
4.74 seconds – The StopSOPAIreland.com petition was launched on Monday night in protest at Sherlock’s planned legislation. 72 hours after its launch, at 11pm on Thursday night, it had accrued 54,714 signatures: the equivalent of one new name every 4.74 seconds.
15 minutes – The amount of time devoted to discussing the proposed laws in the Dáil this week, in a Topical Issues debate on Thursday (if you missed it, here’s the video). It’s set to be discussed again in a full debate next week.
2.2 – The magnitude of a minor earthquake registered in Donegal on Thursday morning. To put that in perspective, the 8.9-magnitude earthquake off Japan last year was 15,970,520,600 times more powerful.
€26,192 – The average income of an Irish person in 2009, according to new stats from the CSO. People from Dublin had the highest average income, at €30,891. By comparison, the poor mites from earthquake-ravaged Donegal earned just €20,518.
9 months – The maximum time that someone should be on a waiting list for elective surgery, as of the end of this year. That’s under plans announced by James Reilly, who is lowering the previous 12-month limit which had been met by most hospitals last year.
€46 – The amount you’ll pay for one of the 12,000 new €10 coins that the Central Bank is minting. The reason why? It’s a specially minted coin featuring the image of Jack B Yeats,
3,000 – The approximate number of old and laws which the government is planning to scrap in the coming months. A new Bill will scrap laws we inherited from Westminster which are now obsolete – like Acts of Parliament which granted citizenship to named individual people.
277 – The number of people included on a list published this week, who have declined honours from the Queen. The likes of Roald Dahl and Alfred Hitchcock are among the list of now-deceased people who have turned down titles like OBE, MBE and knighthoods.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say