5 Of The Best

  Writer and broadcaster Georgi Markov has died of blood poisoning, four days after he said he was stabbed with an umbrella at a London bus stop. Scotland Yard said they are treating his death as suspicious and samples of his blood have been sent to the Porton Down Germ Warfare Centre for examination.       Estimates of world population for various points in history have been a subject of study for many years. Many authoritative sources exist for historical population estimates (e.g. U.S. Census estimates of historical world population). This article lists many of these estimates. Estimates previous to the year 10,000 BC can be made only from archaeological evidence. The last point in which Homo sapiens hit a dangerous low, coming close to extinction, was at approximately 70,000 BC during the Toba catastrophe. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign estimates human world population (Homo sapiens in Africa) between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding couples.[      http://galen.metapath.org/popclk.html On writ