Camille Galura, a woman from the Philippines, gave birth to a baby girl last night just two minutes before midnight. But Camille wasn’t just thrilled that Danica May Camacho was her second child – she was also excited to be giving birth to the world’s seven billionth person.
After her birth, baby Danica May was given a gift certificate for free shoes and a cake that read “7B Philippines”.
Like me, you may be sitting at your computer and scratching your head at this news. After all, we can’t really count every person in the world – it seems like no matter how many times we count, we will always be wrong. So how did baby Danica May get chosen as the world’s seven billionth person?
According to the United Nations Population Fund, our world has now reached a population of seven billion. Because of this, the organization made the decision to declare today as a worldwide celebration of our population, recognizing not only Danica May but also other infants all over the world (Danica May, it seems, was just the first one to be born early Monday morning).
The U.N. admits that today’s celebration and statistics are only a rough estimates, and their “seven billion” population statistic is highly contested by other population researchers across the globe. An Australian population agency argues that the world will not reach 7 billion members until at least July 2014.
So it seems that Danica May’s birth and christening as “the world’s seven billionth baby” is only symbolic. But being the world’s seven billionth person for the rest of your life, no matter how symbolic that title may be, seems pretty darn impressive to me.
Sources:
http://fitperez.com/2011-10-31-worlds-7-billionth-baby-born-in-asia?from…
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/31/7-billionth-person-born-or-may…