Patrick Comerford
I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures passed the 41 million about 3:30 this afternoon (9 June 2026), having passed the 40 million mark at the end of last month (28 March 2026) and 39 million a week earlier (22 May 2026). These figures passed the million mark six times last month, and passed that mark four times in April.
These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (20.5 million) have been within less than five months, since 13 January 2026. The total hits last month were the highest ever, with over 5.8 million hits in May 2026, compared with previous one-month highs in March 2026 (over 4.5 million) and April (almost 4.4 million). The figure of over 5.8 million in May was astonishing, considering it took almost 11 years, from July 2010 until 27 March 2021, to reach what I then thought was the staggering figure of 5 million hits.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 20 million hits or visitors in 2026.
I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were last month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, and one was in February:
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, although that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days that month. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month; ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this latest figure of 40 million into perspective:
The largest known prime number, discovered in late 2024, has over 41 million digits. It has 41,024,320 digits, and if you tried to print it out, the result would fill more than 10,000 pages.
The discovery that this number – known as M136279841 for short – is a prime was made on 12 October 2024 by Luke Durant, a from San Jose, California, who is one of thousands of people working as part of a long-running volunteer prime-hunting effort called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Nearly 1 in five children, an estimated 41 million, are engaged in child labour in Eastern and Southern Africa, according to a new UNICEF Data Brief, with the region accounting for almost one-third of the global total and the highest number of children in hazardous work, including mining and construction.
Canada has a population of about 41 million people.
41 million square metres is 41,000 sq km, the size of Switzerland (41,291 sq km), the Netherlands (41,865 sq km) or Southampton Island (41,214 sq km) in Hudson Bay, one of the larger islands in the Arctic Archipelago in Canada, the 34th largest island in the world.
The National Diet Library in Japan and the National Library of China each has about 41 million items in its collection.
41 million minutes add up to 78 years and 2 days – with 40 minutes left over. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take 78 years, from 7 June 1948, to reach today’s figure of 41 million.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average continue to read my daily prayer diary on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my recent series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 850 to 1,000 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 41 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.
