Heart Facts

The heart is actually located almost in the centre of the chest, between the lungs. It's tipped slightly so that a part of it sticks out and taps against the left side of the chest, which is what makes it seem as though it is located there.
It is about the same size as two adult fists.
Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times.
Even at rest, the muscles of the heart work hard - twice as hard as the leg muscles of a person sprinting.
Feel your pulse by placing two fingers at pulse points on your neck or wrists. The pulse you feel is blood stopping and starting as it moves through your arteries. In adults, pulse rates are normally around 72 beats per minute when resting.
The aorta, the largest artery in the body, is almost the diameter of a garden hose. Capillaries, on the other hand, are so small that it takes ten of them to equal the thickness of a human hair.
Your body has about 5.6 litres (14.2 pints) of blood. This 5.6 litres of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 19,000 km (12,000 miles)--that's the distance from London to Hong Kong!
The heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime--that's enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.