tickets

About 35,000 tickets to the July 2 Live 8 show in Barrie, ON, were made available on Ticketmaster's Canadian website as of 10 a.m. EDT Thursday. There were none left just 21 minutes later.

Other wedding practices

The United Nations estimates more than 70 per cent of all marriages in Ethiopia are the result of abduction.

Video game industry revenue

The worldwide video game industry revenue is around $28 billion. (The worldwide film industry stands at about $45 billion, if DVD and VCR rentals and sales are included)

pac-man

Pac-Man turns 25 this month.

Billy Mitchell, was the first and only person to play a perfect game of Pac-Man (score of 3,333,360 after clearing all 256 levels in more than six hours in 1999).

Alcoholism

Approximately 18 million Americans — 8.5 percent of the population — meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or alcoholism. (Grant, 2003)

Millionaires

Canada had 217 000 millionaires in 2004 (up 8.3% since 2003).

Rankings for millionaires, in thousands, in 2004.
India 70
Brazil 98
Canada 217
China 300
Germany 760
U.S. 2498

A patent discrepancy

Between 1980 and 1999 Arab countries produced 171 international patents. During the same time period South Korea registered 16,328 patents.

HP

Hewlett-Packard registers, on average, 11 new patents a day.

Scientific publications in 1999

There were 528,643 scientific papers published in 1999. Almost a third were by Americans (163,526).

Google Revenues

Google reported record revenues of $1.256 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2005, up 93% year over year.

Googling

As of March 31, 2005, Google employed 3,482 full time employees.

Google

Google is now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago.

Canadian spending on various goods in 2003

20.8 billion - alcohol, tobacco and gambling.

16.3 billion - RRSP contributions.

11.8 billion - home entertainment equipment and services (cable and satellite tv subscriptions, music, stereos, video rentals, and DVD and VHS players)

4.6 billion - books, magazines and newspapers.

2.1 billion - photography.

2.1 billion - art works and events.

1.3 billion - movie ticket sales.

980 million - live performance events.

530 million - live sporting events.