Number of British citizens who live overseas
at least part of the year: 14 million.
List of Poles who made the ultimate sacrifice
in Iraq from mid-2003 to mid-2006
Pvt.
1st class Krystian Andrzejczak
Pvt. 1st class Roman Góralczyk
Warrant officer 1st class Paweł Jelonek
Capt. Jacek Kostecki
Warrant officer 2nd class Marek Krajewski
Corp. 1st class Tomasz Krygiel
Maj. Hieronim Kupczyk
Pvt. Sylwester Kutrzyk
2nd lieutenant Piotr Mazurek
Pvt. 1st class Grzegorz Nosek
2nd lieutenant Daniel Ro«yński
Pvt. 1st class Grzegorz Rusinek
Corp. Marcin Rutkowski
Capt. Sławomir Stró«ak
Warranty officer Karol Szlązak
Pvt. 1st class Gerard Wasilewski
Pvt. 1st class Andrzej Zielke
Former GROM operator unit JW 2305-name unidentified
Former GROM operator unit JW 2305-name unidentified
Waldemar Milewicz (civilian-journalist)
Mounyra Beouamrane (civilian-journalist).
Source:
www.freerepublic.com/~lizol, as of September 1, 2006.
Birthrates and childless households
in EU in 2005
Average
birthrate in EU per 1,000 inhabitants: 10.5.
Five
lowest birthrates in EU: Germany, 8.6; Latvia, 8.8; Lithuania, 8.9; Slovenia,
9.0; Poland, 9.3.
Percentage
of households with no children: Finland, 76 percent; Germany, 75 percent;
Denmark, 74 percent; Austria, 70 percent; Netherlands, 69 percent. EU average:
67 percent.
Source: Eurostat, as reported by Jeffrey Fleischman in Los
Angeles Times, 14 September 2006.
That famous Dutch spirit of religious
tolerance
Years
during which it was illegal for any church building in Amsterdam to be used
for Catholic worship: 1581-1785.
Source: Thomas Basil, “Contrasts in Christendom: Red Lights
in Amsterdam,
Neon in Malta,” New
Oxford Review,
vol. LXXIII,
no. 9 (October 2006), 35.
Great powers and human rights
Number
of racist attacks in the Russian Federation during the first six months
of 2006: over 100.
Number of deaths of victims: 18.
Source: Sova Human Rights Center, as reported by Jonas Bernstein
in Russia
Reform Monitor, no. 1387 (10 July 2006).
Number
of documented lynchings in the United States between 1882-1930: 2,805.
Number of whites among the victims: several hundred.
Source: Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, A
Festival of Violence: An Analysis of the
Lynchings of African Americans
in the American South,
1882-1930 (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995).
A vignette of Polish losses, or the price of colonialsm to the colonized
Number
of Polish medieval parchment documents found by an American soldier in a
destroyed German train in 1945: 11.
Content of documents: administrative acts of Polish kings including a permit
to build a hospital issued by King Władysław Łokietek (1260-1333).
Reason the issue has recently resurfaced: the documents were returned to
Poland.
Source: Michal Jankowski
in Donosy, no. 4265 (1 September
2006).
Bribery in Russia
Percentage
of Russians who have admitted to paying bribes: 50 percent.
Bribe giving by age: 53 percent of people under 25, and 61-64 percent of
people ages 25-44 have given bribes.
Bribe takers by profession: paramedics (51 percent), traffic cops (31 percent),
education workers (20 percent), regular policemen (16 percent), draft board
officials (7 percent).
Source: All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (BTsIOM), as
reported by Russia Reform Monitor of the American Foreign
Policy Council, no. 1388 (23 June 2006).
Internet News
Number
of email messages sent each day worldwide in 2006: 50 billion, of which
88 percent are junk and 1 percent are virus-infected.
Number of available Internet addresses in 2006: 4 billion (based on 16-bit
numbers).
Planned number of Internet addresses: 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
or 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 ninillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion
(based on 32-bit numbers).
Software said to be the first to be compatible with the new system: Vista
of Microsoft Windows, to be released in 2007.
Source: Jonathan Richards
in The Times of London, 15
July 2006.
Internet
use in Germany
Percentage
of Germans who use the Internet regularly: 58 percent.
Percentage of young Germans who use the Internet: 90 percent.
Percentage of senior citizens who use the Internet: 33 percent.
Source: Deutsche
Welle, as reported by UPI, 5 August 2006.
A revolutionary blows up monument, or history repeats itself in Russia
Name
of tsar whose monument was blown up by a “leftist extremist” in 2006:
Nicholas II. Name
of Russian who blew up the monument: Andrei Gubkin. Length
of sentence Gubkin received from the Moscow court in August 2006: 19 years.
Source: UPI (Moscow),
31 August 2006.
Catholic facts and figures
Net
decline in the number of Catholics in the United States between 2005-2006:
300,000 persons.
Net decline in the number of students in Catholic high schools in the same period: 13,000.
Net decline in the number of students enrolled in religious education programs: 204,000.
Net decline in the number of students at Catholic colleges and universities: 9,000.
Number of times a picture of Archbishop Daniel DiNardo, head of the Galveston-Houston Diocese, appeared in the July 21, 2006 issue of Texas Catholic Herald (total number of pages: 28): nine.
Number of articles in which Archbishop DiNardo’s name is mentioned: nine, including two authored by him, in English and Spanish.
Name of president and publisher of the Texas Catholic Herald: Archbishop Daniel DiNardo.
Source: Texas Catholic Herald, 21 July 2006.