8/84Percentage of Chicago restaurant managers who say they allow patrons to smoke cigarettes: 84
5/85Percentage increase in admissions for malnutrition at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital from 1981 to 1983: 24
8/85Percentage of families in New York City with annual incomes over $50,000 that are black: 7
9/85Copies of The Catcher in the Rye checked out of public libraries in Chicago and never returned: 7,500
10/86Number of new products test-marketed in New York City in the last year: 198
11/86Percentage of Chicago public school teachers who send their children to private or parochial schools: 38
10/88Number of the 90,000 Illinois marriage-license applicants screened for AIDS this year who tested positive: 11
2/89Number of years Steve Jenne of Springfield, Illinois, has saved a buffalo sandwich bitten into by Richard Nixon: 28
7/89Rolls of toilet paper Chicago’s city government has produced this year from recycled City Hall wastepaper: 19,000
9/90Number of calls the Illinois Animal Poison Information Center received last year regarding pets swallowing marijuana: 68
11/94Pieces of undelivered mail found in the trunk of a car belonging to a Chicago postman last spring: 3,000
2/94Amount a Chicago woman won last year after suing her former fiancé for breaking their 7-week engagement: $178,000
3/94Number of the 61 children murdered in Chicago last year whose mothers first gave birth as teens: 47
5/94Number of Dan Rostenkowski’s 1993 campaign contributions of more than $200 that came from Illinois residents: 0
8/94Price of a nine-night “Schindler’s List” tour of Krakow, Poland, from Edgewater Travel in Chicago: $1,750
8/94Price paid at auction last year for Pete Rose’s good-behavior voucher from an Illinois minimum-security prison: $770
12/96Number of ethnic restaurants Bill Clinton sampled at last July’s Taste of Chicago: 8
6/96Number of contestants in the Championship Race for Riding Lawn Mowers, held in Rockford, Illinois, last June: 50
7/96Chances that a Normal, Illinois, Mitsubishi worker who the E.E.O.C. believes was sexually harassed has filed suit: 1 in 7
Percentage of the plaintiffs whose gynecological and psychological medical records Mitsubishi has since requested: 100
8/96Price a John Wayne Gacy web site charges for a printout of a 1976 photograph of Gacy with Rosalynn Carter: $15
Years after Gacy became an Illinois Democratic Party precinct captain that he was arrested for 33 murders: 3
10/97Number of Illinois death-row prisoners released since 1977 after their convictions were overturned: 9
12/97Chances that a Chicago public school requires students to wear uniforms: 3 in 4
9/97Number of former or sitting Chicago aldermen convicted of a federal crime in the last 25 years: 22
10/99Number of tires found along the Mississippi River since 1997 by an Illinois man bent on cleaning it: 1,916
10/00Amount a Chicago suburb’s city council offered a Muslim group last June to abandon its plans for a mosque there: $200,000
4/00Number of flowers that prison inmates plant each spring at the Illinois State Fairgrounds: 110,000
4/00Ratio of April showers to plants producing May flowers at the Springfield, Illinois, Park District last year: 1:1,571
6/00Price an Illinois company charges for a pen embedded with Abraham Lincoln’s “genetic essence”: $1,650
7/02Daily fine introduced last month for the outdoor use of upholstered furniture in Normal, Illinois: $100
7/02Minutes after a tornado hit Shiloh, Illinois, in April that the town’s warning siren sounded: 30
8/02Number of students at Illinois’s Aurora University who have earned academic credit for a course in “business golf”: 29
8/04Percentage of Britons who cannot name the city that provides the setting for the musical Chicago: 65
8/04Average number of inches by which Chicago sinks each year as the land it stands on adjusts from the last ice age: 0.04
11/05Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750
Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000
12/05Average hourly wage made by drug-dealing foot soldiers in Chicago, according to a Columbia University study: $3.41
11/06Number of corporations that are now members of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which trades pollution rights: 210
Percentage change so far this year in the total number of contracts traded: +1,425
7/07Percentage of every dollar spent at a locally owned Chicago store that is retained or recirculated in the city: 68
7/07Price from an Illinois company to turn the cremated ashes of a loved one into a 1.5-carat diamond: $24,999
Number of smaller diamonds the company offers in its “Family Plan”: 4