The world at seven billion

When I was born, I was the 77,020,091,140th person to have lived since history began.
How do I know? I went here and plugged in my birth date. What’s your number?
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I’d like to introduce you to a friend.
teddy-and-jewell2
That teddy bear? He is now 49 years old. He was given to me on my first birthday, when he was literally almost bigger than me. And he’s been with me ever since. (The unicorn? His name is Caspian Jewell. And he’s one of the Plush Family. I have LOTS. )
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In a letter to a friend, J.R.R. Tolkien told how one of his famous books happened. The bored Oxford professor was grading student papers when an unexpected idea came into his head. “On a blank leaf I scrawled: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ I did not and do not know why.”
— From the Authors’ Guild Newsletter
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To commemorate Bastille Day, novelist Jonathan Grimwood chooses fiction’s best treatments of the mother of modern revolts.
The top 10 French Revolution novels
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Baton Rouge’s public library system is offering reading lists of the Top 10 bestsellers from 1930 to 2009. In 1940: “How Green Was My Valley” by Richard Llewellyn topped the list. The novel portrays life in a Welsh mining community before environmental abuses darken the landscape beyond repair.
Does that scenario sound a little familiar?
What were they reading?