1/02Last year in which Americans’ confidence in the federal government “to do what is right” was as high as it is today: 1968

Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.)

1/02Last day on which a total tally of those detained in U.S. terrorism investigations was released to the public: 11/2

U.S. Department of Justice

1/02Number of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 5

American Civil Liberties Union (N.Y.C.)

1/02Number of U.S. colleges and universities that were asked by law enforcement to release student information last fall: 220

American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officials (Washington)

    Percentage that released the students’ information without informing them: 90

American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officials (Washington)

1/02Amount the Pentagon paid a private company last fall for exclusive access to satellite pictures of Afghanistan: $3,800,000

National Imagery and Mapping Agency (Bethesda, Md.)

1/02Estimated number of U.S. sorties flown in Iraqi no-fly zones last year: 10,000

U.S. Air Force (Saudi Arabia/Turkey)

1/02Gallons of concentrated anthrax that Iraq has admitted to producing as a biological weapon: 2,245

United Nations Monitoring and Verification Inspection Committee (N.Y.C.)

1/02Number of biological materials with military potential sent to Iraq by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in the 1980s: 14

U.S. Senate Committee on Housing, Banking, and Urban Affairs

1/02Minimum number of the ten biological materials suspected in Iraqi warfare research that were supplied by U.S. firms: 9

U.S. Senate Committee on Housing, Banking, and Urban Affairs

1/02Number of mock biological attacks with live bacteria carried out domestically by the U.S. Army between 1949 and 1969: 199

Biological testing involving human subjects by the Department of Defense, transcript of U.S. Senate hearings, 3/8/77 and 5/23/77

    Year in which the Army released bacteria into New York City’s subway system: 1966

Biological testing involving human subjects by the Department of Defense, transcript of U.S. Senate hearings, 3/8/77 and 5/23/77

1/02Percentage of Navy recruits from the New York City area last year who were green-card holders: 40

Navy Recruiting District, New York (East Meadow)

1/02Change since 2000 in the percentage of Latin Americans who say they prefer democracy to other forms of government: -12

Latinobarometro (Santiago, Chile)

    Change since then in the percentage who feel “confident” in the Catholic Church: -5

Latinobarometro (Santiago, Chile)

1/02Percentage of U.S. Jews who rank the separation of church and state among the top reasons for the country’s success: 86

Public Agenda (N.Y.C.)

     Percentage of the total U.S. population who believe this: 61

Public Agenda (N.Y.C.)

1/02Percentage of Americans who believe that the theory of human evolution is “probably” or “definitely” not true: 47

National Opinion Research Center (Chicago)

    Percentage of Americans who believe that the tenets of astrology”probably” or “definitely” have some scientific truth: 48

National Opinion Research Center (Chicago)

1/02Number of years after being executed as witches that six Massachusetts women were exonerated last fall: 309

Office of the Governor of Massachusetts (Boston)

1/02Months after Element 118 was added to a textbook’s periodic table last year that its discovery was invalidated: 4

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.)/Holt, Rinehart & Winston (Austin, Tex.)

1/02Rank of “serendipity” among words most often queried on Cambridge Dictionaries Online last October: 1

Cambridge Dictionaries Online (Cambridge, U.K.)

    Year in which the word was coined from the Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”: 1754

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin)

1/02Percentage of U.S. college students who say they intend to pursue a foreign language: 57

American Council on Education (Washington)

    Percentage who are actually enrolled in a foreign-language course: 8

American Council on Education (Washington)

1/02Number of nations that got less than ten minutes’ coverage on U.S. network evening news in the 1990s: 88

Tyndall Report (N.Y.C.)

1/02Ratio of minutes devoted to Afghanistan in the 1990s to those devoted to it in three weeks last fall: 1:1

Tyndall Report/Harper’s research

1/02Minimum number of Saudis who have been trained in Al Qaeda camps: 5,000

Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (London)

1/02Ratio of the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile fire since 1990 to the number who have committed suicide: 1:5

U.S. Army (Arlington, Va.)

1/02Percentage change since 1999 in the number of bankruptcies of companies with liabilities of more than $1 billion: +106

Salomon Center for Research in Financial Institutions and Markets, New York University (N.Y.C.)

1/02Amount of debt carried by New York City’s government, per resident, before September 11: $5,066

New York City Office of the Comptroller/U.S. Census Bureau

1/02Ratio of natural disasters worldwide necessitating help from outside the immediate region in the 1990s to those in the 1970s: 2:1

Munich Re Group (Munich, Germany)

1/02Pounds of dust blown into the air each year worldwide, per capita: 769

Dr. Joyce E. Penner, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)/U.S. Census Bureau

1/02Number of days that E. coli bacteria can survive on polyurethane plastic: 15

American Society for Microbiology (Washington)

1/02Last year for which General Accounting Office data on U.S. baggage screeners was not classified as “sensitive”: 1987

U.S. General Accounting Office

1/02Chance that a potentially dangerous item was missed by screeners that year, according to the GAO: 1 in 5

U.S. General Accounting Office

1/02Minimum number of Winter Olympics volunteers who were rejected last fall after a criminal background check: 273

Salt Lake Organizing Committee (Salt Lake City)

1/02Number of cases of Polygamy Porter sold by a Utah brewery since October: 1,000

Wasatch Beers (Park City, Utah)

1/02Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing: 2,400,000

Defense Security Cooperation Agency (Arlington, Va.)

1/02Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan: 1,101

Guinness World Records (London)