Political Stats & Stuff
Number of Americans federally registered as presidential candidates this year : 239
Number of G.O.P. presidential conventions since 1911 with a larger percentage of black delegates than last summer's : 5
Percentage of G.O.P. delegates at the 1912 and 2000 conventions, respectively, who identified themselves as black : 6, 4.1
Percentage of House votes cast by Dick Cheney and Al Gore on abortion between 1979 and 1984 that were the same : 93
Number of House abortion bills voted on since 1994 for every campaign-finance bill voted on : 9
Number of years that a Philip Morris consultant was also working as George W. Bush's gubernatorial campaign manager : 2
Number of Colt revolvers that a Texas judge repaired during jury selection in a capital-murder trial last fall : 2
Estimated tons of lead contained in the estimated 315 million computers that will be obsolete by 2004 : 600,000
Tons of SF5CF3, a synthetic greenhouse gas, discovered this year to have accumulated in the atmosphere since 1950 : 4,000
Ratio of destructiveness to the ozone layer of a molecule of carbon dioxide to that of a molecule of SF5CF3 : 1:18,000
Percentage by which 11 million unexplained lobster deaths reduced Long Island Sound's lobster harvest last fall : 90
Number of U.S. sheep and elk that have tested positive for a variant of mad cow disease in the last year : 60
Percentage change since last year in the number of deaths in Britain due to the human form of mad cow disease : +175
Factor by which pregnancy makes a woman more attractive to malaria-carrying mosquitoes : 2
Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission : $874
Price in Norway : $430
Factor by which cocaine production in Colombia has increased since 1995 : 2
Factor by which annual U.S. military aid to Colombia has increased since then : 31
Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Albanians last August : 83
Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Serbs, whose leaders are calling for a boycott of this fall's elections there : 2
Damages for war crimes that a U.S. court has ordered Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to pay 14 Bosnian plaintiffs : $745,000,000
Amount a Chicago suburb's city council offered a Muslim group last June to abandon its plans for a mosque there : $200,000
Days after the group accepted the offer that the mayor vetoed the deal as "insulting" : 4
Average number of people living per square mile in the Gaza Strip, New Jersey, and Japan, respectively : 8,000, 1,100, 828
Average number of corpses per acre at the University of Tennessee's "body farm," for the study of decomposition : 10
Estimated number of fake haunted houses operating commercially in the United States last October : 3,000
Number of U.S. houses that are really haunted, according to the Ghost Research Society : 789
Percentage change since 1978 in the number of Americans who say they believe in ghosts : +200
Tons by which the Earth's weight was discovered this year to have been overestimated : 8.8 X 1018
Average number of miles by which the Concorde flies closer to the sun than other passenger planes : 4.7
Percentage change since 1986 in the annual number of U.S. patents awarded for a gene or gene fragment : +6,519
Year in which scientists confirmed that subjecting newborn rats to pain may have long-term neurological effects : 2000
Minimum number of months required for a lame duck to fully recover : 3
Column inches that the New York Times devoted last August 13 to Joe Lieberman's resemblance to actor Sam Jaffe : 9
Minimum number of times that Senator John McCain winked while endorsing George W. Bush at last summer's convention : 5
Number of novels by a current vice presidential candidate's wife wherein a vice president dies in flagrante delicto : 1
Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988 : 0
Number of incumbent Republican governors who have won the presidency since 1898 : 0
Year in which Mikhail Gorbachev told Ronald Reagan, "I think you're wasting your money" on Star Wars : 1987
Cost to produce Safeguard, the only U.S. ground-based long-range missile shield ever deployed : $23,500,000,000
Number of days in the 1970s that the system was operational before it was abandoned as inadequate : 135
Number of years of planning and construction devoted to France's Maginot Line fortifications in World War II : 15
Number of days it took the German army to maneuver around them and invade France : 3
Number of troops Italy mistakenly sent to Kristianstad, Sweden, last May instead of Kristiansand, Norway : 116
Rank of France, Italy, and Germany, respectively, among countries with the best overall health-care systems : 1, 2, 25
Percentage of newborns in India who would qualify for intensive care if they were born in California : 30
Percentage by which the cancer death rate in the area around Sydney's Olympic Village exceeds the rest of the city's : 8.5
Factor by which dioxin levels detected around the Village site during construction exceeded EPA guidelines : 1,540
Pounds of fuel required to maintain this year's 11,500 Olympic torches : 2,029
Ratio of the amount of energy generated by 1 gallon of ethanol to the amount of energy required to produce it : 1:0.9
Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleeza Rice, George W. Bush's foreign-policy adviser : 1
Number of times Maureen Dowd's New York Times column has likened a male political candidate's style to lactation : 3
Length, in pages, of Al Gore's 1969 Harvard thesis on the impact of TV "on the conduct of the Presidency" : 105
Percentage change since 1991 in the size of the network TV audience : -24
Percentage change since then in TV networks' combined annual ad revenue : +46
Ratio of Motorola's commercial sales in China last year to the value of its U.S. defense contracts : 3:1
Ratio of Lockheed Martin's 1999 sales to the $13 million fine it will pay for giving secret technology to China : 1,962:1
Days after the Koreas' rapprochement last June that the U.S. replaced the term "rogue states" with "states of concern" : 4
Estimated number of people who live in a "state of concern" : 180,000,000
Date by which the Palestinian Authority announced last summer that a Palestinian state would be established : 9/13/00
Percentage of Palestinians who said at the time that they believed this would occur : 38
Estimated percentage of Ugandan voters who support postponing a multiparty political system : 80
Number of national and independent armies fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo : 12
Chance that a 15-year-old African boy will die of AIDS : 1 in 2
Percentage change since 1990 in the number of deaths from accidental poisoning among elderly Americans : -10
Percentage change since then in the number of such deaths among Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 : +188
Number of the three cancer survivors on the Supreme Court who are also over 70 : 2
Percentage of death-penalty trials since 1976 that appeals courts have found to include "serious, reversible error" : 68
Chance that a government execution since 1976 was performed in Texas : 1 in 3
Percentage of Americans who favor repealing the estate tax : 60
Estimated percentage of Americans deceased last year whose estates paid the tax : 2
Factor by which homeowners' deductions claimed by Americans last year exceed the budget of HUD : 3
Estimated portion of U.S. coastal homes whose plots will be obliterated by erosion by the year 2060 : 1/4
Average number of new homes built each day in New York's East Hampton last year : 0.93
Ratio of the number of copies of The Great Gatsby sold each month in the U.S. to the number sold in the author's lifetime : 5:3
Amount contributed for a University of Nebraska English chair last June by the founder of CliffsNotes : $250,000
Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988 : 0
Amount by which last year's WTO accord is projected to increase annual U.S. grain sales to China : $1,000,000,000
Percentage of last year's U.S. grain sales to the European Union this represents : 96
Percentage of national forestland unprotected under the President's proposed ban on forest-road construction : 78
Miles of new roads that the ban would allow in Alaska's Tongass National Forest : 500
Acres of redwoods saved by Julia "Butterfly" Hill, after her two-year residence in a treetop : 3
Amount her foundation paid Pacific Lumber to spare the trees : $50,000
Maximum suggested donation for a week's course in civil disobedience at Canada's clandestine Co-Motion Action Camp : $125
Price of a two-week stay at California's Entrepreneurship Camp, for ages 9 through 16 : $1,950
Chance that a contestant who's appeared on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has won a million dollars : 1 in 67
Chance that a contestant who appeared on the show's British precursor ever won a million pounds : 0
Number of entertainment award ceremonies scheduled to be held in the U.S. this year : 332
Number of states that declared last August 8 "National Admit You're Happy Day" : 19
Average number of seconds it takes to complete a transaction at a Wendy's drive-through : 150.29
Rank of a Starbucks store locator among the most commonly downloaded non-email Palm Pilot applications : 1
Number of months last spring that a Louisiana town's sewage lines were connected to its fresh water supply : 3
Gallons of bourbon that flowed into the Kentucky River last May during a fire at a Wild Turkey warehouse : 200,000
Percentage of the trailers provided North Carolina's Hurricane Floyd victims last fall that were still in use in May : 56
Percentage of refugees from the Bosnian war who have not returned to their homes since 1995's peace accord : 39
Estimated number of years it will take to remove the 600,000 active mines in Bosnia-Herzegovina : 30
Minimum number of Haitian politicians assassinated since 1994's U.S. military intervention : 8
Bounty placed on the head of any U.S. DEA agent last January by Mexico's Juárez drug cartel : $200,000
Percentage change since 1995 in the number of assaults against federal officers patrolling the California border : +617
Number of semiautomatic paint-ball rifles ordered by the LAPD in preparation for this month's Democratic convention : 40
Amount New Jersey's Camden police spent on riot gear in preparation for Philadelphia's GOP convention : $47,775
Number of years remaining in Pat Buchanan's "political life," according to Buchanan : 10
Minimum amount President Clinton's pension and staff will cost U.S. taxpayers if his life span is average : $6,072,000
Ratio of the number of corporate mergers signed under the Clinton Administration to those signed under Reagan : 3:1
Number of prizes in economics ever funded by the Nobel Foundation : 0
Number funded "in memory of Alfred Nobel" by the Bank of Sweden : 31
Percentage of public relations executives who say they have "had to lie" in the course of their jobs : 25
Distance that the silver-spotted skipper caterpillar can propel its own feces, in feet : 5
Number of leaf-cutter ants required to lift a 10-pound picnic basket : 60,133
Number of hours at 95°F it takes for egg salad to go bad : 4.6
Percentage change in the gonorrhea rate among teens and young adults when the beer tax is raised by 20 cents : -9
Percentage of U.S. teenagers who say they have engaged in oral sex : 55
Percentage who consider the practice "gross" : 55
Average number of words in the written vocabulary of a 6- to 14-year-old American child in 1945 : 25,000
Average number today : 10,000
Ratio of the number of words for the color blue in Maya to the number in Spanish : 3:1
Estimated number of fireflies it would take to generate the visible brightness of the sun : 14,286,000,000
Number of G.O.P. presidential conventions since 1911 with a larger percentage of black delegates than last summer's : 5
Percentage of G.O.P. delegates at the 1912 and 2000 conventions, respectively, who identified themselves as black : 6, 4.1
Percentage of House votes cast by Dick Cheney and Al Gore on abortion between 1979 and 1984 that were the same : 93
Number of House abortion bills voted on since 1994 for every campaign-finance bill voted on : 9
Number of years that a Philip Morris consultant was also working as George W. Bush's gubernatorial campaign manager : 2
Number of Colt revolvers that a Texas judge repaired during jury selection in a capital-murder trial last fall : 2
Estimated tons of lead contained in the estimated 315 million computers that will be obsolete by 2004 : 600,000
Tons of SF5CF3, a synthetic greenhouse gas, discovered this year to have accumulated in the atmosphere since 1950 : 4,000
Ratio of destructiveness to the ozone layer of a molecule of carbon dioxide to that of a molecule of SF5CF3 : 1:18,000
Percentage by which 11 million unexplained lobster deaths reduced Long Island Sound's lobster harvest last fall : 90
Number of U.S. sheep and elk that have tested positive for a variant of mad cow disease in the last year : 60
Percentage change since last year in the number of deaths in Britain due to the human form of mad cow disease : +175
Factor by which pregnancy makes a woman more attractive to malaria-carrying mosquitoes : 2
Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission : $874
Price in Norway : $430
Factor by which cocaine production in Colombia has increased since 1995 : 2
Factor by which annual U.S. military aid to Colombia has increased since then : 31
Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Albanians last August : 83
Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Serbs, whose leaders are calling for a boycott of this fall's elections there : 2
Damages for war crimes that a U.S. court has ordered Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to pay 14 Bosnian plaintiffs : $745,000,000
Amount a Chicago suburb's city council offered a Muslim group last June to abandon its plans for a mosque there : $200,000
Days after the group accepted the offer that the mayor vetoed the deal as "insulting" : 4
Average number of people living per square mile in the Gaza Strip, New Jersey, and Japan, respectively : 8,000, 1,100, 828
Average number of corpses per acre at the University of Tennessee's "body farm," for the study of decomposition : 10
Estimated number of fake haunted houses operating commercially in the United States last October : 3,000
Number of U.S. houses that are really haunted, according to the Ghost Research Society : 789
Percentage change since 1978 in the number of Americans who say they believe in ghosts : +200
Tons by which the Earth's weight was discovered this year to have been overestimated : 8.8 X 1018
Average number of miles by which the Concorde flies closer to the sun than other passenger planes : 4.7
Percentage change since 1986 in the annual number of U.S. patents awarded for a gene or gene fragment : +6,519
Year in which scientists confirmed that subjecting newborn rats to pain may have long-term neurological effects : 2000
Minimum number of months required for a lame duck to fully recover : 3
Column inches that the New York Times devoted last August 13 to Joe Lieberman's resemblance to actor Sam Jaffe : 9
Minimum number of times that Senator John McCain winked while endorsing George W. Bush at last summer's convention : 5
Number of novels by a current vice presidential candidate's wife wherein a vice president dies in flagrante delicto : 1
Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988 : 0
Number of incumbent Republican governors who have won the presidency since 1898 : 0
Year in which Mikhail Gorbachev told Ronald Reagan, "I think you're wasting your money" on Star Wars : 1987
Cost to produce Safeguard, the only U.S. ground-based long-range missile shield ever deployed : $23,500,000,000
Number of days in the 1970s that the system was operational before it was abandoned as inadequate : 135
Number of years of planning and construction devoted to France's Maginot Line fortifications in World War II : 15
Number of days it took the German army to maneuver around them and invade France : 3
Number of troops Italy mistakenly sent to Kristianstad, Sweden, last May instead of Kristiansand, Norway : 116
Rank of France, Italy, and Germany, respectively, among countries with the best overall health-care systems : 1, 2, 25
Percentage of newborns in India who would qualify for intensive care if they were born in California : 30
Percentage by which the cancer death rate in the area around Sydney's Olympic Village exceeds the rest of the city's : 8.5
Factor by which dioxin levels detected around the Village site during construction exceeded EPA guidelines : 1,540
Pounds of fuel required to maintain this year's 11,500 Olympic torches : 2,029
Ratio of the amount of energy generated by 1 gallon of ethanol to the amount of energy required to produce it : 1:0.9
Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleeza Rice, George W. Bush's foreign-policy adviser : 1
Number of times Maureen Dowd's New York Times column has likened a male political candidate's style to lactation : 3
Length, in pages, of Al Gore's 1969 Harvard thesis on the impact of TV "on the conduct of the Presidency" : 105
Percentage change since 1991 in the size of the network TV audience : -24
Percentage change since then in TV networks' combined annual ad revenue : +46
Ratio of Motorola's commercial sales in China last year to the value of its U.S. defense contracts : 3:1
Ratio of Lockheed Martin's 1999 sales to the $13 million fine it will pay for giving secret technology to China : 1,962:1
Days after the Koreas' rapprochement last June that the U.S. replaced the term "rogue states" with "states of concern" : 4
Estimated number of people who live in a "state of concern" : 180,000,000
Date by which the Palestinian Authority announced last summer that a Palestinian state would be established : 9/13/00
Percentage of Palestinians who said at the time that they believed this would occur : 38
Estimated percentage of Ugandan voters who support postponing a multiparty political system : 80
Number of national and independent armies fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo : 12
Chance that a 15-year-old African boy will die of AIDS : 1 in 2
Percentage change since 1990 in the number of deaths from accidental poisoning among elderly Americans : -10
Percentage change since then in the number of such deaths among Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 : +188
Number of the three cancer survivors on the Supreme Court who are also over 70 : 2
Percentage of death-penalty trials since 1976 that appeals courts have found to include "serious, reversible error" : 68
Chance that a government execution since 1976 was performed in Texas : 1 in 3
Percentage of Americans who favor repealing the estate tax : 60
Estimated percentage of Americans deceased last year whose estates paid the tax : 2
Factor by which homeowners' deductions claimed by Americans last year exceed the budget of HUD : 3
Estimated portion of U.S. coastal homes whose plots will be obliterated by erosion by the year 2060 : 1/4
Average number of new homes built each day in New York's East Hampton last year : 0.93
Ratio of the number of copies of The Great Gatsby sold each month in the U.S. to the number sold in the author's lifetime : 5:3
Amount contributed for a University of Nebraska English chair last June by the founder of CliffsNotes : $250,000
Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988 : 0
Amount by which last year's WTO accord is projected to increase annual U.S. grain sales to China : $1,000,000,000
Percentage of last year's U.S. grain sales to the European Union this represents : 96
Percentage of national forestland unprotected under the President's proposed ban on forest-road construction : 78
Miles of new roads that the ban would allow in Alaska's Tongass National Forest : 500
Acres of redwoods saved by Julia "Butterfly" Hill, after her two-year residence in a treetop : 3
Amount her foundation paid Pacific Lumber to spare the trees : $50,000
Maximum suggested donation for a week's course in civil disobedience at Canada's clandestine Co-Motion Action Camp : $125
Price of a two-week stay at California's Entrepreneurship Camp, for ages 9 through 16 : $1,950
Chance that a contestant who's appeared on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has won a million dollars : 1 in 67
Chance that a contestant who appeared on the show's British precursor ever won a million pounds : 0
Number of entertainment award ceremonies scheduled to be held in the U.S. this year : 332
Number of states that declared last August 8 "National Admit You're Happy Day" : 19
Average number of seconds it takes to complete a transaction at a Wendy's drive-through : 150.29
Rank of a Starbucks store locator among the most commonly downloaded non-email Palm Pilot applications : 1
Number of months last spring that a Louisiana town's sewage lines were connected to its fresh water supply : 3
Gallons of bourbon that flowed into the Kentucky River last May during a fire at a Wild Turkey warehouse : 200,000
Percentage of the trailers provided North Carolina's Hurricane Floyd victims last fall that were still in use in May : 56
Percentage of refugees from the Bosnian war who have not returned to their homes since 1995's peace accord : 39
Estimated number of years it will take to remove the 600,000 active mines in Bosnia-Herzegovina : 30
Minimum number of Haitian politicians assassinated since 1994's U.S. military intervention : 8
Bounty placed on the head of any U.S. DEA agent last January by Mexico's Juárez drug cartel : $200,000
Percentage change since 1995 in the number of assaults against federal officers patrolling the California border : +617
Number of semiautomatic paint-ball rifles ordered by the LAPD in preparation for this month's Democratic convention : 40
Amount New Jersey's Camden police spent on riot gear in preparation for Philadelphia's GOP convention : $47,775
Number of years remaining in Pat Buchanan's "political life," according to Buchanan : 10
Minimum amount President Clinton's pension and staff will cost U.S. taxpayers if his life span is average : $6,072,000
Ratio of the number of corporate mergers signed under the Clinton Administration to those signed under Reagan : 3:1
Number of prizes in economics ever funded by the Nobel Foundation : 0
Number funded "in memory of Alfred Nobel" by the Bank of Sweden : 31
Percentage of public relations executives who say they have "had to lie" in the course of their jobs : 25
Distance that the silver-spotted skipper caterpillar can propel its own feces, in feet : 5
Number of leaf-cutter ants required to lift a 10-pound picnic basket : 60,133
Number of hours at 95°F it takes for egg salad to go bad : 4.6
Percentage change in the gonorrhea rate among teens and young adults when the beer tax is raised by 20 cents : -9
Percentage of U.S. teenagers who say they have engaged in oral sex : 55
Percentage who consider the practice "gross" : 55
Average number of words in the written vocabulary of a 6- to 14-year-old American child in 1945 : 25,000
Average number today : 10,000
Ratio of the number of words for the color blue in Maya to the number in Spanish : 3:1
Estimated number of fireflies it would take to generate the visible brightness of the sun : 14,286,000,000