Once every 86,400 seconds, this newspaper is delivered to your door with
another day of news, sports, funnies and all the rest.
These facts apeared in The Dallas Morning News on January 14, 1998. I was hoping to expand on these facts, so, if you have any others like this e-mail me and I will try to put them in.
Once every 86,400 seconds, this newspaper is delivered to your door with
another day of news, sports, funnies and all the rest.
But a lot is happening in the meantime. An American is born every nine seconds. Another dies every 13 seconds. Yet another has his or her car stolen every 23 seconds.
You get the idea. And every few seconds, somebody comes up with another "every . . . seconds" statistic.
They may not be entirely accurate, of course. Clinique brags that it sells a
bottle of moisturizing lotion every four seconds, but it's doubtful that buyers
are marching to the cash register, assembly-line style, every four seconds
around the clock.
It's just a mathematical equation - the total number of times something happens divided by the number of seconds in that time period.
But the resulting statistic (every 25 seconds, an American suffers a heart attack) usually seems far more dramatic than the original (1.25 million Americans suffer heart attacks each year).
So let's synchronize our watches, tick off the seconds and see what's happening.
0.1 seconds --------- Somebody buys a roll of Life Savers.
0.25 seconds -------- A can of Spam is consumed in the United States.
0.5 seconds --------- Somebody buys a Barbie Doll.
1 second ------------ The U.S. government spends about $53,300.
1.5 seconds --------- Somebody dials 911 from a cellular phone.
2 seconds ----------- A small comet my be plunging into the Earth's atmosphere.
3 seconds ----------- Somebody in the world buys a bottle of Chanel No.5.
4 seconds ----------- A larceny or theft is committed in the United States.
5 seconds ----------- Somebody in the world buys a Star Trek book.
8 seconds ----------- Another U.S. baby boomer turns 50.
9 seconds ----------- An American is born.
10 seconds ---------- Someone in the world dies from tobacco use.
12 seconds ---------- An American needs blood.
13 seconds ---------- An American dies.
19 seconds ---------- A violent crime is committed in the United States.
25 seconds ---------- An American suffers a heart attack.
27 seconds ---------- A couple get divorced in the United States.
29 seconds ---------- A U.S. child starts to smoke cigarettes.
31 seconds ---------- Oprah Winfrey makes about $100.00.
38 seconds ---------- A U.S. teenager becomes pregnant.
42 seconds ---------- An American attempts suicide.
45 seconds ---------- An American dies of a heart attack.
49 seconds ---------- Another person immigrates to the United States.
60 seconds ---------- A house catches fire in the United States.
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