Wondering how many solar eclipses there have been since the day you were born? How about when your next birthday on Mercury is? Perhaps you want to know how much Earth’s population has changed since your very special day.

You can answer these questions and more at BBC Earth with this interactive tool — you just plug in your birthdate, height, and gender, and you’ll get all sorts of interesting facts about our planet, as it relates to your lifespan.

“Find out how,” says the BBC site, “since the date of your birth, your life has progressed; including how many times your heart has beaten, and how far you have travelled through space.”

Heady stuff, indeed.

The data the BBC site gives you is categorized into several big picture ideas, like “How you have changed,” with facts about how many times your heart has beaten (as compared to a blue whale) during your lifespan, and how many fly generations could have happened in the same span of time. “How the world has changed” includes how many major volcanic eruptions, solar eclipses, and new creature discoveries have occurred since you came into being. The “How we have changed the world” section has several interesting facts, like what cities you are the same age as (Cancun, in my case), and how many of a given endangered species are left (1500 Borneo pygmy elephants).

The data is fascinating, and surprisingly personal. It’s culled from a wide variety of sources, including UNdata, Institute for Population and Social Security Research, Population Reference Bureau, GeoHive, Wikipedia and the BBC’s own calculations, just to name a few.

Give BBC Earth a looksee, and find out just how fascinating this planet of ours really is.

Source: BBC Earth

Via: Kottke.org