Patrick Comerford
At some point this evening (4 January 2025), this blog reaches a new peak, with 9.5 million hits since I first began blogging. It is both a humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and leaves me not with a sense of achievement but a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog.
After I began blogging, it took until July 2012 to reach 0.5 million hits. This figure rose to 1 million by September 2013; 1.5 million in June 2014; 2 million in June 2015; 2.5 million in November 2016; 3 million by October 2016; 3.5 million by September 2018; 4 million on 19 November 2019; 4.5 million on 18 June 2020; 5 million on 27 March 2021; 5.5 million on 28 October 2021; 6 million over half a year later on 1 July 2022; 6.5 million on 6 February 2023; 7 million on 13 August 2023; 7.5 million on 29 November 2023; 8 million by 30 April 2024; 8.5 million less than three months later on 14 July 2024; 9 million on 21 October 2024; and now 9.5 million this weekend.
This means that this blog continues to reach half a million readers in a three-to-four month period, somewhere close to 200,000 a month, up to 6,000 a day, and an average of over 800 hits for each post.
In recent months, these figures have been exceeded on occasions, and 15 of the 20 days of busiest traffic have been in 2024 alone:
• 35,452 hits (28 May 2024)
• 27,616 (11 May 2024)
• 26,974 (27 May 2024)
• 23,234 (3 September 2023)
• 22,436 (19 June 2024)
• 21,999 (4 September 2023)
• 16,250 (21 August 2024)
• 15,936 (18 June 2024)
• 15,211 (7 September 2023)
• 15,193 (6 September 2023)
• 14, 676 (26 November 2024)
• 14,411 (20 June 2024)
• 14,282 (4 August 2024)
• 13,566 (1 December 2024)
• 13,362 (17 June 2024)
• 13,301 (11 December 2023)
• 12,605 (29 November 2024)
• 12,604 (30 November 2024)
• 12,027 (19 July 2024)
• 11,776 (24 November 2024)
At times in recent months, there have been 8,000 to 10,000 hits a day, with 214,970 hits last month, or an average of almost 7,000 a day (December 2024).
With this latest landmark figure of 9.5 million hits by this evening, I find myself asking:
• What do 9.5 million people look like?
• What would £9.5 million or €9.5 million buy?
• How vast is 9.5 million sq km?
• Indeed, what does 9.5 million of anything mean to the environment?
A light year is approximately 9.5 million million km long – but let’s bring things down to scale.
If this blog had one hit a minute, then 9.5 million minutes come to more than 18 years.
At over 9.7 million sq km, China is the third biggest country in the world by land area, after Russia and Canada. The United States follows with an area of about 9.5 million sq km, or 16.5% of the Earth’s total land area.
But where can one find 9.5 million people?
According to WaterAid, 9.5 million people will die from hospital-acquired infections in low and middle income countries by September 2024. A third of these deaths will be children. Half of these infections are becoming resistant to antibiotics and first-line drugs.
The number of people infected by Covid-10 has reached 9.5 million.
Some reports say that 9.5 million people of working age are neither in work nor looking for work in the United Kingdom. But some reasons why people may not be looking for work include studying, caring or retiring. Others may want to work but are unable to due to childcare costs or ill-health.
Around 9.5 million people of working age have a disability in the UK, and yet only 5.1 million of them are in work.
Unicef says 9.5 million people in Afghanistan live in areas without access to health facilities.
Shanghai has a population of 9.5 million people within a 10 km radius. The population of London is expected to reach 9.5 million by mid-2026.
A more than sobering figure comes with the fact that before the Holocaust and before the Nazis came to power, approximately 9.5 million Jews were living in Europe in 1933, comprising 1.7% of the total European population and more than 60 per cent of the world’s Jewish population.
By 1945, most European Jews – 2 out of every 3 – had been killed. These are very chilling figures indeed, and should be kept in mind later this month when we recall the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the first concentration camps in January 1945, and later this year as we prepare to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
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