Welcome to a brand new day. If you’re reading this, you’re one of seven billion people lucky enough to live it. You may not feel any better than usual, but just by being here right now, you are a part of some truly amazing things. Take a look and see.

• Today, one tree will produce enough oxygen for you and another living thing to breathe.

• Your lungs will inhale that air about 23,000 times.
• And your heart will pump the oxygen through your body 104,000 times.
• Our planet will get struck by 8.6 million lightning bolts today.

• Luckily for most of us, there will only be about seven earthquakes...
• ...and 18,000 storms.
• Light will travel 1.6 billion miles today.
• If that seems like a lot, think of the 50 trillion cells each of us will retire or regenerate.
• Or the 170 miles-per-hour impulses sent to and from your brain.
• And who can forget the 32 million bacteria per inch that call your body home, sweet home (you probably won’t, now).

• There are 18 million people whom you owe a birthday wish to today.
• In fact, 365,000 of them are celebrating their very first one.
• Which makes sense, since about 120 million people… do the deed per day.
• Pound for pound, each of those tiny babies is stronger than a full-grown ox.
• And they all have blue eyes, at least for now.

• The neurons in each baby’s brain will continue to grow every day for the rest of its life.
• By the way, in case you’ve ever wondered, every baby is born with its own unique smell… except for identical twins, who smell the same.
• From the time of its birth, each baby’s nose will learn to recognize around 50,000 different smells.
• And, believe it or not, a baby is born with a fully-formed sense of hearing.
• There’s only one voice and smell a baby will instantaneously recognize at birth: its mother.

• In one day, an adult like yourself will take roughly 8,000 steps.
• You’ll say about 48,000 words while you’re awake...
• ...And 60% of you will lie at least once every 10 minutes.
• Even if it’s an ordinary day, you’ll laugh around 15 times.
• Which is closely followed by the amount of times you’ll fart, 14.
• Hopefully some of those coincide with your 20 daily minutes on the toilet.
• If you take a shower today, chances are it’ll be about 12 minutes long.

• You’ll blink approximately 13 times per minute today. If you’re female, that number’s probably higher.
• If you’re working today, the international average is that you’ll earn $16, give or take
• That's important, since you’ll eat anywhere from three-to-five pounds of food.

• The average adult needs 8.25 hours of sleep per night to feel fully rested.
• Certain parts of the brain use greater amounts of oxygen and glucose, which is converted into energy, while sleeping than awake.
• If you’ve ever heard the saying that people are the loopiest at 3 A.M., you may be surprised to learn it’s true. Scientists refer to the period between 3:00 and 5:00 in the morning as the “dead zone.” For some reason, the human brain demonstrates the greatest need for sleep during this time frame.

• You’ll dream for around two hours tonight.
• That’s between four-to-seven dreams nightly, or around six years’ worth of dreaming in your lifetime.

• In one day, the average American will travel from one location to another four times.
• If you drive a car, you’ll spend about 55 minutes behind the wheel.
• 142,000 new cars will be put on the market today.
• And 87,000 planes will either depart from or arrive in the United States.

• Remember those 8,000 daily steps? If you were to measure those in a straight line, they’d tally up to just shy of five miles.

• In the next twenty-four hours, our planet will travel 1.603 million miles through space.

• The Sun will burn 600 million tons of hydrogen per second today, and there are 86,400 of them.
• A day on Earth is measured by how long it takes the planet to rotate on its axis. So technically, a single day is twenty-three hours, 56 minutes, and four seconds long.

• If you’re like many Americans, you might not think today is a good day.

• But in spite of that, when you wake up tomorrow...
  • your heart will still be pumping,
  • babies will be born,
  • you'll find something to laugh at,
  • and the sun will burn as bright as before.

The world doesn't stop turning just because of who leads it. Neither should you.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.