European Passenger Train Percentage
Last December I had a slight problem with my ear and unfortunately I wasn't able to fly for a little while. I was glad there was an amazing train system in Europe, so I had an alternative to travel to and from Berlin. Here is a chart with the percentage of train transportation by country in Europe, coming from a dataset published by the European statistics office (Eurostat):
I have been lucky enough to use the trains in all those countries.
Ireland Population
Map of Ireland with population by county (including NI as well). Dublin is by far the most populated county.
Worldwide Earthquake Statistics
Last Sunday I was reading the breaking news about a cliff that had collapsed into the sea on New Zealand’s South Island following a severe magnitude 5.9 earthquake that happened near Christchurch. I remembered when I visited New Zealand last year that I heard the nickname of this country is the "Shaky Isles" for its constant seismic activity. The two islands that compose this country lie on the margin of two colliding tectonic plates, making them earthquake prone.
The usgs.gov website has an interesting section with statistics about earthquakes worldwide. Please find the following heatmap table with the data they published there:
There were two particularly deadly years: 2004, when a [tsunami hit many countries in the Indian Ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami), and 2010, when a huge earthquake happened in Léogâne, Haiti.
Top Wine Producing Countries In The World
Yesterday I finished the week with a couple of nice glasses of wine from Portugal. This morning when I woke up and looked at the bottle, I started to ask myself what the top countries in the world in terms of wine production are. France? Italy? Spain?
Fortunately, Wikipedia has an article with data coming from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), sorting the countries by their volume of wine production for the year 2013 in metric tonnes.
There are no surprises in the Top 3 positions (they are indeed France, Italy, and Spain), but it's interesting how China has climbed to the 6th position, above Argentina and Australia:
