Harper’s Index

Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988: 0¹

Number of incumbent Republican governors who have won the presidency since 1898: 0²

Year in which Mikhail Gorbachev told Ronald Reagan, “I think you're wasting your money” on Star Wars: 1987³

Cost to produce Safeguard, the only U.S. ground-based long-range missile shield ever deployed: $23,500,000,000⁴

Number of days in the 1970s that the system was operational before it was abandoned as inadequate: 135⁵

Number of years of planning and construction devoted to France's Maginot Line fortifications in World War II: 15⁶

Number of days it took the German army to maneuver around them and invade France: 3⁷

Number of troops Italy mistakenly sent to Kristianstad, Sweden, last May instead of Kristiansand, Norway: 116⁸

Rank of France, Italy, and Germany, respectively, among countries with the best overall health-care systems: 1, 2, 25⁹

Percentage of newborns in India who would qualify for intensive care if they were born in California: 30¹⁰

Percentage by which the cancer death rate in the area around Sydney's Olympic Village exceeds the rest of the city's: 8.5¹¹

Factor by which dioxin levels detected around theVillage site during construction exceeded EPA guidelines: 1,540¹²

Pounds of fuel required to maintain this year's 11,500 Olympic torches: 2,029¹³

Ratio of the amount of energy generated by 1 gallon of ethanol to the amount of energy required to produce it: 1:0.9¹⁴

Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's foreign-policy adviser: 1¹⁵

Number of times Maureen Dowd's New York Times column has likened a male political candidate's style to lactation: 3¹⁶

Length, in pages, of Al Gore's 1969 Harvard thesis on the impact of TV “on the conduct of the Presidency”: 105¹⁷

Percentage change since 1991 in the size of the network TV audience: -24¹⁸

Percentage change since then in TV networks' combined annual ad revenue: +46¹⁹

Ratio of Motorola's commercial sales in China last year to the value of its U.S. defense contracts: 3:1²⁰

Ratio of Lockheed Martin's 1999 sales to the $13 million fine it will pay for giving secret technology to China: 1,962:1²¹

Days after the Koreas' rapprochement last June that the U.S. replaced the term “rogue states” with “states of concern”: 4²²

Estimated number of people who live in a “state of concern”: 180,000,000²³

Date by which the Palestinian Authority announced last summer that a Palestinian state would be established: 9/13/00²⁴

Percentage of Palestinians who said at the time that they believed this would occur: 38²⁵

Estimated percentage of Ugandan voters who support postponing a multiparty political system: 80²⁶

Number of national and independent armies fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: 12²⁷

Chance that a 15-year-old African boy will die of AIDS: 1 in 2²⁸

Percentage change since 1990 in the number of deaths from accidental poisoning among elderly Americans: -10²⁹

Percentage change since then in the number of such deaths among Americans between the ages of 45 and 64: +188³⁰

Number of the three cancer survivors on the Supreme Court who are also over 70: 2³¹

Percentage of death-penalty trials since 1976 that appeals courts have found to include “serious, reversible error”: 68³²

Chance that a government execution since 1976 was performed in Texas: 1 in 3³³

Percentage of Americans who favor repealing the estate tax: 60³⁴

Estimated percentage of Americans deceased last year whose estates paid the estate tax: 2³⁵

Factor by which homeowners' deductions claimed by Americans last year exceed the budget of HUD: 3³⁶

Estimated portion of U.S. coastal homes whose plots will be obliterated by erosion by the year 2060: 1/4³⁷

Average number of new homes built each day in New York's East Hampton last year: 0.93³⁸

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: 5:3³⁹

Amount contributed for a University of Nebraska English chair last June by the founder of CliffsNotes: $250,000⁴⁰

Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988: 0⁴¹

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