Patrick Comerford
Once again, this blog continues to reach more and more readers as it reaches the milepost of 23 million readers this evening (12 February 2026). This follows soon after passing the landmarks of 22.5 million earlier this month (4 February), 22 million hits late last month (20 January), and 21.5 million hits a week before that (13 January). At the end of 2025, this blog had 21 million hits by New Year’s Eve (31 December 2025), with almost 2.5 million visitors throughout December (2,423,018).
So far this year, there have been about 2 million hits or visitors for 2026 by this evening. This means, this blog has passed the half million mark twice this month, twice last month, and five times in December.
I began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers – a number reached within the past week alone. It then took more than another year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. This blog reached the 10 million mark a year ago (12 January 2025), almost 15 years later. In the 12 months since then, another 11.5 million hits have been counted.
Throughout last year, the daily figures were overwhelming on many occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were last month alone, four were last January, and one was last month:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 166,155 (15 December 2025)
• 146,944 (14 December 2025)
• 140,417 (16 December 2025)
• 122,398 (17 December 2025)
• 116,911 (30 December 2025)
• 112,221 (13 December 2025)
• 106,475 (27 December 2025)
• 106,169 (16 January 2026)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
The latest figure of 23 million is all the more staggering as half of those hits (11.5 million) have been within less than a year, since 10 March 2025. The rise in the number of readers seems to have been phenomenal throughout last year, and the daily figures are overwhelming at times, currently running at about 40-50,000.
With this latest landmark figure of 23 million readers, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 23 million people look like?
• Where do we find 23 million people?
• What does £23 million, €23 million or $23 million mean?
• What would it buy? How far would it stretch? How much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?
A collaborative computational effort uncovered the longest known prime number, it was announced back in 2018, and it is over 23 million digits long. The new number was given the name M77232917 for short.
Prime numbers are divisible only by themselves and one, and the search for ever-larger primes has long occupied maths enthusiasts. However, the search requires complicated computer software and collaboration as the numbers get increasingly hard to find. M77232917 was discovered on a computer belonging to Jonathan Pace, an electrical engineer from Tennessee who had been searching for big primes for 14 years. It is nearly one million digits longer than the previous record holder, which was identified as part of the same project at the beginning of 2016.
The 23 enigma is a belief in the significance of the number 23. The concept of the 23 enigma has been popularized by various books, movies, and conspiracy theories, which suggest that the number 23 appears with unusual frequency in various contexts and may have a larger, hidden significance. Since the 1990s, the free techno and raver counterculture has adopted it as a symbol.
There are about 26 million Sikhs globally, of whom 23 million live in India where they are less than 2% of the 1.4 billion population. Sikhism is the world’s fifth-largest organised religion.
Taiwan and Sri Lanka each has a population of about 23 million people.
23 million metres is 23,000 km and 23 million sq metres is 23,000 sq km.
Tuscany in central Italy has an area of about 23,000 sq km. Tuscany is the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, has many protected nature reserves and UNESCO World Heritage sites and is the second-most-popular Italian region for tourists in Italy, after Veneto.
The main tourist attractions are in Florence, Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena and Lucca. Tuscany was the home of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, the Medicis and Michelangelo … and is the home of the Uffizi … and of Chianti and Montepulciano.
23,000 sq km is also the approximate size of Belize and of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in north-east Germany, also known by its anglicised name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania.
Rob Goliah (36) from Nottingham has cycled 23,000 km ( million metres) from Melbourne in Derbyshire to Melbourne in Australia. He took six month to cycle 23,000 km and visited 22 countries along the route, setting out on 29 June and arriving on 26 December.
Then last weekend, large crowds gathered at Sydney Opera House on 7 February to celebrate the end of a Roscommon man’s two-year charity cycle across the world. Fergal Guihen’s mammoth ‘Rossie to Aussie’ 23,000 km challenge has taken him through 28 countries and three continents over the last two years since leaving Arigna, Co Roscommon, on 10 March 2024.
His journey aimed to raise awareness and funds for both the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation and North West STOP. His fundraising cycle has raised more than €150,000 to date. He travelled the full length of three continents and 28 countries. ‘What I originally believed would take one year ultimately became a two-year adventure and, without question, the toughest thing I have ever done’.
In 2025 alone, the EU allocated a total of €23 million in humanitarian aid to UNRWA for the delivery of assistance in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. The EU remains critical to UNRWA’s ability to provide Palestine refugees in the occupied West Bank access to urgent shelter support and essential services.
A very rare sketch of a foot by Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel sold earlier this month for a record €23 million at a Christie’s auction in New York. The recently discovered drawing was part of a study for the Libyan Sibyl on the ceiling of the chapel in the Vatican.
I am one among more than 23 million adults in the UK who have not learnt the lifesaving skill of CPR. Almost half of UK adults (43 per cent) have never learnt CPR, according to new figures that suggest as many as 23 million are yet to learn the skills to save a life.
Schizophrenia affects approximately 23 million people or 1 in 345 people (0.29%) worldwide. The UN Population Fund states that a further 23 million girls risk being subjected to this violence over the next four years. An estimated 23 million miscarriages occur every year worldwide, meaning 44 pregnancy losses each minute.
In September 2025, Greek authorities estimated that at least €23 million in EU agricultural subsidies were fraudulently claimed, marking a major, ongoing scandal involving 1,036 cases of illegal payments. The fraud involved false declarations of land and livestock by non-farmers, and is being investigated by Greek police and the EPPO.
The Olympic freestyle skier, Eileen Gu has become one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes, earning $23.1 million last year, according to the Forbes rankings in 2025 of the highest-paid female athletes, listing her after tennis player Coco Gauff with around $33 million, followed by Aryna Sabalenka at $30 million and Iga Swiatek at $25.1 million.
Conor McGregor has been boasting this month Donald Trump is exploring a $23 million investment in McGregor’s business interests … I can only start to imagine how they deserve each other and how well matched they are.
And 23 million minutes is 43.8 years, or roughly 383,333 hours or 15,972 days. In other words, if this blog was getting one hit a minute, it would take almost 44 years to reach today’s 23 million mark.
So, yet again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
Once again, a continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach up to 70-90 people each day.
It is almost four years now since I retired from active parish ministry, but I think many of my priest-colleagues be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 500 to 600 people or more each week.
Today, I am very grateful to all the 23 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
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