The United States led soybean production for most of the twentieth century. Brazil now grows more, and the reason has less to do with farmin...
The Beatles reached 19 number-one albums in barely six years. Taylor Swift and Drake are closing in, but the chart they are climbing works n...
One organisation has six League of Legends world titles. In Dota 2, eleven different teams have won and none has won three. The two records...
Brazil produces more coffee than the next two countries combined. That concentration is why a single cold night in Minas Gerais can move pri...
The four longest bridges ever built all carry trains, and none of them cross water. The reason is a piece of civil engineering economics mos...
Just Fontaine scored 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup — in a single tournament. The structure of the modern tournament makes that almost unrea...
Reserve rankings are usually a list of export powerhouses. Switzerland is third, and it got there by a completely different route from every...
China and India lead the world on total CO2 output and appear nowhere in the per-capita top eight. Both rankings are correct. They are answe...
China poured more concrete in three years than the United States did in the entire twentieth century. The production data explains how, and...
Monaco tops the world at 87 years, with Japan, Singapore and Switzerland close behind. What the longevity leaders have in common — and what...
For the first time in centuries, China is not the world's most populous country. India's 1.43 billion people now top the ranking — and the g...
English tops the list with 1.5 billion speakers, but most of them learned it as a second language. A look at what the global language rankin...