7 billion people - where do you fit in?

With the UN announcing that there are now 7 billion people on the planet, it can be easy for us all to ponder our individual insignificance. But this interactive tool from the BBC allows us to see exactly where we fit in the vast sea of human history.

Found here, all that is required is your birthday and the website will tell you your rank in terms of how many people were alive when you were born as well as your rank in terms of all human life - apparently I am the 78,400,677,751st person to ever live! What would Malthus say?

This could be a great starter for getting your students to discuss population issues and whether there are too many people on the planet. The site also allows you to further analyse the results by country and gender. The older teachers among us may notice a very large gap between their rank and their students!