Paris March Bigger Than 1969 Vietnam Protest and 2013 March for Life Combined

UPDATE: Estimates for Sunday's Paris march attendance have soared higher, with some outlets reporting as many as 3 million people swarmed the heart of the French capital to support free speech.

The Associated Press reported that around France, up to 3.7 million people marched on Sunday — which could mean more than 1 in 20 French, 5.6 percent of the nation's population, had taken a public stand.

BREAKING: Official: At least 3.7 million people march around France for unity against terrorism.

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 11, 2015

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As many as 1.5 million people participated in Sunday's gigantic march in Paris — with a few notable absences — making the march the largest in French history.

The crowd gather during a march in Paris, France, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015. Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Paris on Sunday in a massive show of unity and defiance in the face of terrorism that killed 17 people in France's bleakest moment in half a century. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

What do those numbers mean in context?

Sunday's march was enormously larger than some of America's biggest protests — even more so when you account for the size of the country.

Given France's population of 66 million, 1.5 million marchers could mean nearly 2.5 percent of the entire country's population participated in the march — though plenty of foreigners converged on the French capital to rally as well.

"As many as 1.5 million people" are marching in Paris, organisers estimate https://t.co/k3zg1AT2tc #MarcheRepublicaine pic.twitter.com/wwLHgwlahW

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) January 11, 2015

By comparison, the famed November 1969 march against the Vietnam War, heralded as the largest anti-war march in American history, drew roughly half a million protesters, less than 0.3 percent of the then-202 million-strong U.S. population.

The 2013 March for Life was a little bigger — estimates go as high as 650,000 — but with the U.S. population at more than 316 million by that point, it was still a mere 0.2 percent of all Americans.

Of course, at 1.5 million, the French march isn't just bigger on a percentage basis — it's bigger in absolute terms than the 2013 March for Life and the 1969 Vietnam protest combined.

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