mostly nuggets

blessed britons

The President then put to vote a United Kingdom amendment to delete the additional article of the draft Declaration ... which declared that the rights proclaimed in the Declaration would also apply to any person belonging to the population of Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories...
The representative of the United Kingdom explained that article 2 of the draft Declaration laid down that every individual was entitled to the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Declaration, without distinction of any kind. He argued that, if article 2 had any meaning and if its terms were sufficiently precise and enumerated sufficiently dearly the distinctions to be outlawed, there was no reason to add an additional article (article 3) stipulating that those rights applied to the inhabitants of the Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories.

— United Nations Yearbook Summary

http://www.udhr.org

mad world

The United States curreently produces more than 5 tons of carbon per person per year. Japan and Western European nations have per capita emissions that range from 1.6 tons to 4.2 tons, with most below 3 tons. In the developing world, emissions average 0.6 tons per capita, with China at 0.76 and India at 0.29. This means that to reach an 'even-handed' per capita annual emission limit of 1 ton of carbon per person, India would be able to increase its carbon emission to more than three times what they now are. China would be able to increase its emissions a more modest 33 per cent. The United States, on the other hand, would have to reduce its emissions to no more than one-fifth of present levels.

— Peter Singer

One World

3.3 million enslaved africans

Submitted by antarchi on May 16, 2007 - 02:51.

...over 11,000 slaving voyages left from English ports to Africa for slaves, carrying some 3.3 million enslaved Africans from their homeland to the Americas. The numbers of enslaved Africans carried by English ships represented up to a third of all the Africans forcibly carried to the Americas during the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.