Came across a fact while reading Tim Moore's "Do Not Pass Go" (a travel ponderment on London) - apparently more people visit Selfridges every year than live in Australia. Unfortunately Tim supplies neither a population figure for Australia nor the amount of Selfridges visitors, so you are left thinking "erm, that must be a lot" and (if you're (sadly) like me) trot off to do some research. Thanks to World Bank Statistics I've now discovered that the population of Australia is just over 20 million. Which actually leaves me thinking, "wow, so few people in such a big country", rather than "cor, don't a lot of people shop at Selfridges " - is this what Tim intended?
Journalists are very good at this kind of thing, for example they always seem to relate just about every land mass to the size of Wales. Recent examples here, here and here.
WHO KNOWS WHAT THE SIZE OF WALES IS ANYWAY?!?
One last thing for you ponder (and complete the research to) is: more people visit the British Library every year than live in New Zealand .
(And if you too want to compare all land masses to the size of Wales this clever website does it for you)
No comments:
Post a Comment