Harper’s Index

Number of names of U.S. peace and civil-rights activists in the CIA's Operation CHAOS database in 1973: 300,000¹

Number of U.S. residents in 1954 that the FBI had slated for roundup in the event of a national emergency: 26,000²

Maximum number of words in the longest phrase searchable in the FBI's case database today: 1³

Percentage of Washington, D.C., murder cases opened last year that remained unsolved by year's end: 66⁴

Change since 1988 in the number of emergency rooms in the United States: -1,235⁵

Chance that an American filing for bankruptcy last year did so because of medical expenses: 1 in 2⁶

Percentage change last year in the total profits of Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies: +35⁷

Percentage change in the total profits of all Fortune 500 companies: -54⁸

Chance, worldwide, that a child performs work that endangers his or her health: 1 in 9⁹

Year in which the prom of Georgia's Taylor County public high school was first integrated: 2002¹⁰

Average amount by which the price a black American pays for a new car exceeds that paid by a white for the same model: $420¹¹

Extra amount Oregon charges per year to register a hybrid gas/electric car in compensation for lost gasoline taxes: $15¹²

Number of round-trips to the sun represented by the world's outstanding frequent-flyer miles: 42,500¹³

Projected percentage by which melting Arctic ice will shorten shipping routes between Europe and East Asia by 2020: 33¹⁴

Ratio of the amount of water Americans use in the shower each year to the amount wasted in leaks nationwide: 6:5¹⁵

Amount a Spanish inventor charges per month to lease a front-loading 37-nozzle pet-washing machine: $600¹⁶

Price a Las Vegas filmmaker charges through his website for a film of homeless men fighting each other: $19.95¹⁷

Number of copies he claims to have sold so far: 275,000¹⁸

Minimum spending on refreshments required per luxury box at this year's U.S. Open tennis tournament: $24,000¹⁹

Number of students at Illinois's Aurora University who have earned academic credit for a course in "business golf": 29²⁰

Amount an Ohio power company agreed to pay in April to purchase a town affected by its plant's pollution: $20,000,000²¹

Amount the Bush Administration paid this year to buy back oil and gas drilling leases off Florida's coast: $115,000,000²²

Factor by which this exceeds the price that the Reagan Administration received for selling them: 7²³

Months before the Florida gubernatorial election this year that President Bush announced the buyback: 5²⁴

Days that a U.S. soldier was investigated in May for calling Bush "a joke" in a letter to a newspaper: 10²⁵

Number of months in jail to which one can be sentenced for discussing politics without a permit in Zimbabwe: 6²⁶

Number of days in advance that the permit must be obtained: 4²⁷

Number of northern Nigerian states in which being divorced and pregnant is enough evidence for an adultery conviction: 12²⁸

Years that a Nigerian woman appealing a sentence of death by stoning in March will be allowed to live to wean her baby: 1.5²⁹

Percentage of Afghans who will "soon" get AIDS if adulterous women are not jailed, according to a government deputy: 50³⁰

Number of nations besides Somalia and the United States that have yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child: 0³¹

Chance an American knows that more Palestinians than Israelis have died in political violence since 2000: 1 in 3³²

Number of fatalities sustained by the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon during its 24 years there: 239³³

Number of countries in which at least one U.S. soldier was stationed last year and in 1950, respectively: 148, 95³⁴

Estimated number of survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attacks in Japan now living in the United States: 1,000³⁵

Ratio of words the New York Times devoted to Stephen Jay Gould's obituary to those it spent on John Gotti's: 4:7³⁶

Years before the death of Britain's Queen Mother in March that the Times of London first wrote her obituary: 64³⁷

Last year in which South Africa's average life expectancy was as low as it is today: 1955³⁸

Number of Argentines who belong to at least one of their country's 5,000 bartering clubs: 2,500,000³⁹

Number of calves a pair of matching sweatsuits bought there in June: 1⁴⁰

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