Interesting Facts

Child benefit costs UK taxpayers £12 billion a year. (Anyone with children can claim child benefit, regardless of their personal circumstances. About 7.7 million families currently get it, but that could be about to change as Chancellor George Osborne has announced it will be axed for higher-rate taxpayers from 2013. Unlucky 13 for some then.)

Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived two atomic bombs. (He was visiting Hiroshima on a business trip for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, when he stepped off a tram the first bomb exploded. He was badly burnt, temporarily blinded and lost much of his hearing, but he managed to return home to Nagasaki. He was in his boss's office explaining how he had almost been killed only days before, when the second bomb detonated. Does this make him the luckiest man in history, or the unluckiest?)

On the 8th of August, 2008, an estimated 9,000 couples will be married in China, where the number 8 is considered to be very lucky. (The number “8″ is considered very lucky in China, something about it sounding like part of the phrase “to get rich” in Mandarin. Although with the cost of weddings being such as they are, I doubt that any of the couples will be getting rich any time soon.) #IFUpdate - I wonder how they are all doing?