Harper’s Index

Chance that an American favors the resumption of any form of nuclear-xweapons testing: 1 in 10

Total number of nuclear weapons worldwide when the first nuclear test ban negotiations began in 1958: 10,713

Percentage by which the number had changed by the time the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963: +220

Percentage by which it has changed since then: -7

Number of U.S. nuclear reactors that have reported safety violations since 1996: 102

Percentage of federal nuclear-safety inspectors that the Senate proposed laying off last year: 37

Number of countries that have not made public their assessment of the Y2K readiness of their computer systems: 91

Number of countries besides Australia that have ever formally recognized Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor: 0

Year in which Congress banned the State Department's military training program for Indonesian troops: 1992

Year in which the Pentagon's military training program for Indonesian troops ended: 1998

Average number of U.S. cruise missiles launched per month during the Clinton Administration: 11

Estimated number of the 222,200 “armor-piercing bomblets” dropped on Kosovo last spring that remain unexploded: 11,110

Chance that a Serb has left Kosovo since NATO troops took it over last June: 1 in 2

Chance that an ethnic Albanian left Kosovo while Serbian troops controlled the region last spring: 1 in 2

Percentage change in the number of Israelis living on the West Bank since the signing of 1993's Oslo peace accords: +50

Number of dogs and whores of whom Yasir Arafat is the son, according to Syria's defense minister: 120,000

Average number of death threats received each week this year by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: 2

Number of objects in the Brooklyn Museum's permanent collection that are made with human dung: 4

Number of toxic spills reported within one mile of the Clintons' new house in Chappaqua, New York: 43

Square miles of errant Antarctic icebergs being tracked by the National Ice Center in Washington, D.C.: 10,000

Number of coffins unearthed by floods in North Carolina last September: 110

Chance that an American without health insurance earns at least $50,000 per year: 1 in 4

Percentage of U.S. children who say their greatest wish for their parents is that they make more money: 23

Percentage who say their greatest wish for their parents is that they “spend more time with me”: 11

Percentage of parents who predicted that their children would prefer more time with them: 56

Chance that a U.S. juvenile offender on death row is in Texas: 1 in 3

Chance that a black man living in Alabama cannot vote because of a felony conviction: 1 in 3

Billions in new federal poverty spending that the President proposed during his poverty tour last July: $1

Billions cut from the five-year federal food stamp budget in 1996: $24

Amount by which the U.N.'s estimate of what the U.S. owes it exceeds the Senate's estimate: $774,000,000

Estimated revenue that the U.N. generates each year for New York City: $3,300,000,000

Percentage change in the number of joint ventures signed between Cuba and foreign companies since 1992: +886

Days before Time Warner's Fortune Global Forum opened in China last fall that China banned Time's special China issue: 6

Percentage of Americans who believe that the media “hurt democracy”: 38

Percentage who say they would vote for Donald Trump for president over Al Gore or George W. Bush: 5

Percentage who say they would vote for Heather Locklear: 6

Year in which New York's Marriott Marquis hotel began taking reservations for New Year's Eve 1999: 1983

Year in which the hotel opened: 1985

Price of a bottle of Czar Nicholas II's champagne salvaged last year from a ship sunk in 1916: $4,922

Number of titles for “horseless carriages” issued to new car owners in Maine last spring due to a Y2K error: 2,000

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