Friday, October 16, 2026 · Played it? Here's how rare each one really was.
Names drawn from a hat at random, no redraws.
1 in 1.6 groups 63.2%
1,334,961 of the 3,628,800 possible draws give nobody their own name (36.8%), so at least one self-draw happens 63.2% of the time.
Fun fact: Group size barely matters: from 7 people up it's always 63.2%, which is 1 − 1/e. Redraws are almost guaranteed.
Source: Math: 1 − 1,334,961 ÷ 10! (derangements)
Worldwide.
1 in 50 people 2.00%
The American Academy of Ophthalmology says only about 2% of the world's population has green eyes, the rarest color.
Fun fact: At a school of 500, expect about 10 green-eyed students. Brown is over 25 times more common: more than half of all people have brown eyes.
Worldwide, all airlines, 2024.
1 in 159 passengers 0.63%
SITA counted 6.3 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers in 2024, down from 6.9 in 2023.
Fun fact: A full 300-seat jet averages about 2 mishandled bags. Across 2024 that still added up to 33.4 million bags, and 41% of the trouble was at transfers.
Assumes births are spread evenly across the 4-year leap cycle.
1 in 1,461 people 0.068%
A 4-year cycle has 1,461 days (365 × 4 + 1), and only one of them is February 29.
Fun fact: A 50,000-seat stadium would hold about 34 leap-day babies. A leapling turning 40 has had only about 10 real birthdays.
Source: Math: 1 ÷ 1,461
Share of mined natural diamonds that are blue (type IIb), GIA scientist's estimate, 2018
1 in 5,000 diamonds 0.02%
GIA research scientist Evan Smith estimated about 0.02% of mined diamonds are type IIb, the blue kind. 0.02% is 1 in 5,000.
Fun fact: Blue diamonds form at least 660 km down, about four times deeper than most diamonds. Their blue comes from boron that probably started out on the ocean floor.
Source: National Jeweler interview with GIA's Evan Smith, Aug 2018 (depth and boron: GIA, Aug 2018)