2019 in numbers: from lenient prison sentences to Santa school
Here’s a look back at some memorable statistics from swissinfo.ch stories over the past year, including the 20 candles on our birthday cake and the CHF500,000 it takes to raise two children.
January
10
Commit murder in Switzerland and you could be given a life sentence. However, “life” could mean as little as ten years. Why do Swiss judges hand down relatively lenient sentences compared with other countries?
February
95
Some 95% of mothers breastfeed in Switzerland. But many prejudices still exist about how – and even if – one should breastfeed.
March
20
SWI swissinfo.ch blew out 20 candles! Discover how much journalism has evolved over the past two decades.
April
14
Is 14 too young to make a career choice? Students have to make big decisions about their professional futures at a young age in Switzerland.
May
1,250,000
The Swiss Federal Railways transports 1.25 million people a day, but not all of them know how to behave properly. Do you?
Icky or fine? Read what other train travellers think about bare feet on seats in… “How to behave on a Swiss train” – https://t.co/xpwDUGXPSlExternal link #traintravelExternal link @InterrailExternal link @EurailExternal link pic.twitter.com/zzQBBxp9Y4External link
— Susan Misicka (@SMisicka) July 31, 2019External link
June
14
On June 14, hundreds of thousands of women across Switzerland took to the streets, demanding equal treatment and conditions as men. The date was no coincidence: on June 14, 1991, half a million women marched for the first “Women’s Strike”. Gender inequality is still widespread in Switzerland.
July
7,000
Throwing the Fête des Vignerons, a traditional winegrowers’ festival held every 20-25 years in the lakeside town of Vevey, is no small task. Daily two-hour shows feature over 7,000 local actors, singers and musicians – almost all volunteers.
August
20
Poverty in Switzerland has increased by 20% over the past five years. In one of swissinfo.ch’s most-read stories of the year, a journalist wrote about living on the Swiss minimum subsistence level for a month.
September
955
The Swiss are innovation champions, filing 955 patents per million inhabitants last year, compared with 332 in Germany and 132 in the United States. In a gallery we present several Swiss inventions that have become design icons.
October
213,000
Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with cosmologist James Peebles for their work in furthering our understanding of the universe. The two Swiss received around CHF213,000 each. In 1995 they were the first to announce the discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our own. In this swissinfo.ch video, Queloz explains what we’ve learnt so far – and what the future might hold.
November
500,000
Love is priceless, they say. But raising two children in Switzerland costs at least CHF500,000.
December
220
Swiss-style Santas, known as Samichlauses, go to refresher courses every year to stay at the top of their game. The Santa training courses are run by the St Nicholas Society of the City of Zurich, made up of 220 volunteers.
More
Why cars still reign supreme in ‘rail-nation’ Switzerland
More
Heard the one about the Swiss company installing laugh detectors?
More
Switzerland fined for denying asylum for gay Iranian
More
Taxes on pension payments: no problem for the Swiss Abroad
More
Voters could scupper Swiss motorway extension plans
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