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Your support makes all the difference.Number of times the Europa Hotel in Belfast has closed down (despite being bombed 36 times):
1
Amount that house prices rose in Northern Ireland last year:
12 per cent
Ranking of the Republic of Ireland among the world's largest software exporters:
2
Volume of Kim Il Sung's collected works published by the North Korean government this year to coincide with the fifth anniversary of his death:
26th
Number of years the Academie Francaise has taken compiling the ninth edition of its authoritative dictionary of the French language, which has reached the letter `m':
64
Number of foods, at least, documented as causing allergic reactions:
170
Percentage increase in total food demand if there is a 10 per cent increase in per capita advertising of a food category:
0.0002
Amount Heinz is spending on changing its tomato-ketchup bottle to give it a "global visual identity":
$50m
According to "retail anthropologists", who base their findings on hours of videotapes of shoppers, the percentage of shoppers who buy some items if they pick up a basket:
75
Percentage of shoppers who buy some items if they do not pick up a basket in a shop:
34
Number of feet inside a shop entrance which shoppers breeze through without taking anything in before they get their bearings, prompting retail anthropologists to call it a "decompression zone":
30
Number of eggs of the extinct Aepyornis maximus or elephant-bird - each valued at $1,600 - recently discovered by customs at Le Havre in containers shipped from Madagascar:
315
Height of the Aepyornis maximus, which lived on Madagascar around 2,000 BC and had a body like an ostrich and a head and neck like a dinosaur:
3 metres
SOURCES: THE GUARDIAN, FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, LLOYD'S LIST, FORTUNE, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, MANAGEMENT TODAY, FOOD INGREDIENTS AND ANALYSIS INTERNATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING, PACKAGING NEWS, FORTUNE, LLOYD'S LIST.
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