4/86Amount the average household spends on fresh vegetables each week: $1.74
12/92Price of a box of pina colada-flavored candy canes from the Spangler Candy Company of Bryan, Ohio: $1.89
5/04Factor by which the unemployment rate of African-American college graduates exceeds that of white graduates: 1.9
12/05Percentage of British adults who are members of any of their country’s three major political parties: 1.2
7/96Cost per minute to hear the Bill of Rights read over the phone “in a provocative manner” by a woman named Bambi: $1.98
7/84Percentage of Americans who believe foreign relations is the most important problem facing the country today: 2
12/84Rank, among children’s most common fears, of being home alone: 1
9/85Number of the 48 commanders of the main contra force, the FDN, who did not serve in Somoza’s National Guard: 2
9/99Factor by which “a cynical view” and an “aggressive” personality may increase arterial calcium deposits: 2
8/07Ratio of the amount of water used to make the containers to the amount of bottled water consumed: 2:1
1/09Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2
2/86Number of the three best-selling automobiles in 1985 that were pickup trucks: 2
6/87Number of states that fly the Confederate flag over their capitol: 2
6/87Rank of martinis among all drinks sold in bars and restaurants today: 2
8/87Percentage of Republican Party donors who say they could not support George Bush for the presidency: 2
9/87Number of the 161 players in baseball’s Hall of Fame who wore glasses while on the field: 2
10/87Number of times Michael Dukakis has cried in public since announcing his candidacy: 2
12/87Percentage reduction in South Africa’s exports in 1986 attributable to Western sanctions: 2
12/87Rank of entertainment, among all U.S. industries, in export earnings: 2
12/88Number of the 2,869 U.S. Customs Service employees screened for drugs since 1986 who tested positive: 2
12/88Number of inquiries about John Dillinger’s penis received by the Smithsonian Institution each month: 2
4/89Number of office plants a member of Congress is allowed to borrow from the U.S. Botanic Garden: 2
4/89Ratio of the average salary of a morning radio personality to that of an afternoon radio personality: 2:1
7/89Number of the 698 people who have died in U.S. national parks since 1984 who were killed by animals: 2
11/89Number of pages of his newspaper a Filipino editor says military personnel forced him to eat at gunpoint in May: 2
12/89Number of the 3 highest-grossing foreign films shown in the Soviet Union last year that starred Steve Guttenberg: 2
1/90Number of days after a truck bomb killed 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut that the United States invaded Grenada: 2
3/90Number of days after the invasion of Panama that an Oregon software company introduced the game Find Noriega!: 2
5/90Total amount of network TV airtime devoted to the national elections in Chile and Brazil last December, in minutes: 2
8/90Ratio of the average office rent in Moscow’s business district to the rent in midtown Manhattan, per square foot: 2:1
9/90Minimum amount of saturated fat that Julia Child says she makes an effort to consume each day, in tablespoons: 2
10/90Number of years George Bush has been citing Bonfire of the Vanities as an example of his pleasure reading: 2
11/90Ratio of hazardous waste produced by the Pentagon to that produced by the top 3 industrial-waste producers: 2:1
1/91Number of members of Congress who have sons or daughters serving in the Persian Gulf: 2
4/91Ratio of the size of the female spider monkey’s clitoris to the size of the male monkey’s penis: 2:1
10/91Number of hours Linda Judson of Cobb County, Georgia, spent in jail last May for failing to return a rented videotape: 2
10/91Ratio of the production cost of a Coca-Cola can to the production cost of the Coca-Cola it contains: 2:1
5/92Number of times a candidate other than Jerry Brown has brought up the S&L crisis during the national debates: 0
Number of times any candidate has mentioned homelessness during the debates: 2
5/92Percentage by which the likelihood of a child becoming obese increases for every hour of TV watched per day: 2
8/92Number of subscribers to Surfer Magazine who live in Saudi Arabia: 2
8/92Rank of Pat Paulsen, among candidates winning the most votes in North Dakota’s Republican primary in June: 2
8/92Number of the 3 items looted from the Frederick’s of Hollywood Museum in L.A. last April that have been returned: 2
9/92Ratio of the number of Republican Party staffers engaged in negative research to Democratic staffers who are: 2:1
10/92Ratio of the number of times President Bush has had his hair cut this year to the number of times Bill Clinton has: 2:1
11/92Chances that a director of a failed S&L has been sued by the Resolution Trust Corporation: 1 in 30
12/92Ratio of American marriages between black men and white women to those between black women and white men: 2:1
2/93Ratio of rats to people in Washington, D.C.: 2:1
6/93Number of Baghdad’s eight daily newspapers that are controlled by Saddam Hussein’s son: 2
7/93Ratio of Japanese schools playing the national anthem on the first day of classes in 1992 to those that did in 1985: 2:1
11/93Ratio of the number of wild turkeys in the United States to the number of wild-turkey hunters: 2:1
12/93Ratio of Americans who say health care is the nation’s most important problem to those who say crime and violence are: 2:1
4/94Number of the four most highly paid sports figures worldwide last year who are race-car drivers: 2
4/94Number of Married … with Children scripts about TV violence rejected by the Fox network last year: 2
7/94Factor by which the likelihood that a U.S. heart-attack victim will receive surgery exceeds that of a Canadian: 2
9/94Number of paramedics on duty last fall for the speed-eating contest at the Artichoke Festival in Castroville, California: 2
Number of contestants who have ever required the Heimlich maneuver: 1
1/95Ratio of the number of U.S. police officers who commit suicide each year to the number killed in the line of duty: 2:1
1/95Number of oceanographers conducting a study of the ducks’ dispersion as a measure of ocean currents: 2
1/95Distance between the Speaker of the House and the U.S. presidency, in heartbeats: 2
2/95Number of times Walter Cronkite has attended a Grateful Dead concert: 2
4/95Ratio of this year’s federal budget to the average annual budget during World War 11, in 1995 dollars: 2:1
4/95Ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in political violence since the signing of the self-rule accord in 1993: 2:1
5/95Rank of Georgia among states with the largest percentage of residents in prison, on parole, or on probation: 2
8/95Ratio of the price of the Los Angeles Times in South Central L.A. to the price in Orange County: 2:1
10/95Ratio of the number of doctors currently employed by the Pentagon to the maximum number required during wartime: 2:1
11/95Number of international human rights treaties the U.S. violated this year by allowing Alabama to reinstate chain gangs: 2
1/96Number of homemade sex videos in Penthouse magazine’s “Amateur” series: 2
1/96Ratio of the infant-mortality rate in Washington, D.C., to the rate in Havana: 2:1
4/96Ratio of the number of ob-gyns over the age of 64 who perform abortions to those under the age of 40 who do: 2:1
8/96Rank California dentists assign the trustworthiness of Bill Clinton’s smile as compared with that of Bob Dole’s: 2
9/96Rank of the elderly among age groups most likely to believe Bob Dole’s age would make him a “less able” president: 1
Days after Dole’s daughter was laid off from work last year that she began campaigning for her father: 2
1/97Years after Naomi Campbell said “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” that she posed for a 10-page fur spread in W magazine: 2
2/97Ratio of U.S. defense spending to the combined total spent by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya: 2:1
2/97Number of times that the mother-in-law of Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry has run for president: 2
4/97Hours that 3 miles of Nebraska’s Route 83 were closed last fall when a truck carrying two nuclear bombs overturned: 2
4/97Number of Planet Hollywood franchises to be opened in the Middle East this year: 2
5/97Number of times Kermit the Frog has delivered a college graduation commencement address: 2
7/97Number of the four best-selling classical music albums of all time that are collections put out by Victoria’s Secret: 2
7/97Number of years British Prime Minister Tony Blair served as lead singer of the rock band Ugly Rumours: 2
12/97Number of years federal law limited congressional campaign spending before this was ruled unconstitutional in 1976: 2
4/98Months after Martin Luther King Jr. publicly called the U.S. the “world’s greatest purveyor of violence ” that he was killed: 2
4/98Ratio of the net worth of the richest 1 percent of U.S. households to the size of the national debt: 2:1
5/98Price a San Francisco hotel charges guests per one-minute phone session with its on-call psychotherapist: $2
5/98Factor by which the average suicide rate in a city where gambling is legal exceeds that in a city where it is not: 2
5/98Factor by which having an overweight parent increases a child’s chances of becoming obese: 2
8/98Ratio of highway spending Congress passed last May to the cost of gold-plating one lane of the U.S. interstate system: 2:1
8/98Factor by which the 1915 birth weight of Frank Sinatra exceeds the average weight of a baby born in New Jersey today: 2
10/98Minimum amount of salsa that USDA regulations allow a public school to offer as a serving of vegetables, in tablespoons: 2
11/98Number of days that an unauthorized visitor spent at a NASA mission control console during a launch last year: 2
12/98Ratio of U.N. back dues owed by the U.S. to total back dues owed by all other member countries combined: 2:1
12/98Number of Harvard fellowships endowed by members of Osama bin Laden’s family since 1992: 2
12/98Number of years it took before Disney ‘s planned community of Celebration, Florida, experienced its first violent crime: 2
12/98Percentage of Russians who say they have confidence that Boris Yeltsin can run the country: 2
12/98Rank of “office too hot” among white-collar employees’ most common workplace complaints: 2
Rank of “office too cold”: 1
1/99Months after boxing promoter Don King was acquitted of fraud last year that he took his jurors to the Bahamas: 2
2/99Average number of daily deaths per 10,000 that constitutes an internationally recognized “emergency”: 2
4/99Ratio of Americans who say they trust TV news magazines to those who say they trust print news magazines: 2:1
5/99Number of the 25 species seriously affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill that have fully recovered: 2
5/99Number of independent-counsel investigations since 1978 whose prosecutors and targets have not been made public: 2
6/99Number of spare parts that NASA retrieved from an Alabama museum last March to use on a space shuttle: 2
6/99Ratio of husbands who say they fell in love with their spouse at first sight to wives who say this: 2:1
6/99Estimated maximum number of hours that a male june bug will cling to its partner after copulation: 2
7/99Percentage by which the incidence of skin cancer rises for every 1 percent decrease in the size of the ozone layer: 2
9/99Points by which the national Nielsen rating of the 1999 Women’s World Cup exceeded that of the NBA Finals: 2
10/99Number of times CBS’s press release for Jesus, the miniseries, mentions the “billions” of Christians He inspired: 2
11/99Margin by which the ten-member Kansas Board of Education voted to drop human evolution from the curriculum this year: 2
Number of presidential candidates besides Bill Bradley who have publicly criticized the Kansas board’s decision: 0
11/99Number of films about Y2K disasters that Hollywood studios are planning to release in the next four months: 0
12/99Average number of death threats received each week this year by New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: 2
1/00Months after publishing The Communist Manifesto that Karl Marx became editor of a newspaper funded by industrialists: 2
1/00Percentage change in the average amount of cloth required to clothe a U.S. woman between 1913 and 1928: -64
Number of World War I battleships said to have been built from the steel donated by U.S. women from their corsets: 2
2/00Hours it took a Tennessee jury last December to decide that the assassination of Martin Luther King was a conspiracy: 2
2/00Ratio of the price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad to what Pizza Hut paid last fall for an ad on a Russian space rocket: 2:1
2/00Number of the two memoirs published by GOP presidential candidates last year that use the phrase “toga party”: 2
6/00Ratio of the amount Americans spent on potato chips in 1996 to spending on federal political campaigns that year: 2:1
7/00Number of hidden video cameras discovered in the men’s showers at a Yosemite campground last July: 2
9/00Number of the three cancer survivors on the Supreme Court who are also over 70: 2
10/00Number of years that a Philip Morris consultant was also working as George W. Bush’s gubernatorial campaign manager: 2
10/00Number of Colt revolvers that a Texas judge repaired during jury selection in a capital-murder trial last fall: 2
10/00Factor by which pregnancy makes a woman more attractive to malaria-carrying mosquitoes: 2
10/00Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Serbs, whose leaders are calling for a boycott of this fall’s elections there: 2
12/00Number of times that visiting foreign defense ministers have been injured by the Pentagon’s security system since 1998: 2
12/00Number of campaigns lost by the sons of George H. W. Bush before winning any: 2
12/00Minutes required to take in “the true story of Christmas ” at Little Rock’s Living Nativity drive-through: 2
1/01Rank of repetitive motion among factors that correlate with forearm pain among workers: 2
Rank of dissatisfaction with the level of “support from supervisors or colleagues”: 1
4/01Number of years ago that new energy secretary Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2
4/01Minimum number of stuffed lions that Pakistan ‘s recently ousted prime minister took with him into exile last year: 2
4/01Square miles of Quebec City to be enclosed with chain-link fencing during a free-trade meeting there this month: 2
4/01Number of tries it took a blind North Dakota man to pass a shooting test last fall before receiving a gun permit: 2
6/01Average number of pounds gained by an international student during his or her first ten weeks in the U.S.: 2
6/01Ratio of the weight of a croissant at an Au Bon Pain to that of a typical croissant at a Parisian bakery: 2:1
8/01Months after his election in February that Sharon criticized Palestinians for “sending children to the front”: 2
8/01Number of right-wing Colombian groups on the United States ‘ designated foreign terrorist list: 0
8/01Rank of being “free of pain” among seriously ill Americans’ top priorities regarding care at the end of their life: 1
Rank of being “at peace with God”: 2
9/01Minimum number of U.S. high schools whose students chose a custodian as a graduation speaker last spring: 2
9/01Number of times the President has met with Miss America this year to discuss her interest in “character education”: 2
10/01Spending money that Slobodan Milosevic can earn per day for laundry duty at the U.N. prison at The Hague: $2
11/01Members of Congress who voted against this fall’s resolution to authorize an armed response to September 11’s attack: 1
Members who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to authorize further U.S. attacks on Vietnam: 2
1/02Ratio of natural disasters worldwide necessitating help from outside the immediate region in the 1990s to those in the 1970s: 2:1
3/02Weeks after Italy passed a new evidence-restriction law that the prime minister tried to use it in his own defense: 2
4/02Number of accidents the U.S. nuclear submarine that capsized a Japanese fishing boat last year has had since then: 2
6/02Weeks during which the U.S. government suspended investment of federal workers’ pension funds this year: 2
10/02Years that the National Security Agency’s new head of research held the same position at Disney: 2
10/02Number of Hollywood films released in the last two years for which Senator Orrin Hatch has co-written songs: 2
11/02Number of federal trademark cases dismissed since July with opinions stating that the plaintiff is “advised to chill”: 2
11/02Ratio of the number of pardons George W. Bush has issued turkeys to those he has issued human beings: 2:1
3/03Number of active-duty members of the U.S. military, per structure it owns, worldwide: 2
3/03Number of pygmy monkeys seized from a traveler’s pants last December by L.A. customs officials: 2
7/03Ratio of New York City’s minimum fine for smoking tobacco in a bar to its minimum fine for possessing marijuana: 2:1
8/03Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion in April: 2
Number by New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1
9/03Ratio of Strom Thurmond’s age at his death in June to the average U.S. life expectancy in the year he was born: 2:1
11/03Number of people per mobile-phone line in the United States: 2
1/04Factor by which a U.S. Gulf War veteran is more likely to develop Lou Gehrig’s disease than an average American: 2
3/04Days after George W. Bush announced plans for a Moon base that the Hubble telescope’s maintenance was discontinued: 2
5/04Number of Holsteins disqualified from the Ohio State Fair last August because they were wearing a hair piece: 2
5/04Number of times that Everglades saw grass switches gender during a week of flowering: 2
6/04Number of times that none-of-the-above won a Duma seat last winter in Ulyanovsk, Russia, Lenin’s birthplace: 2
7/04Ratio of deaths of U.S. contractors worldwide in the last three months to those between April and September last year: 2:1
7/04Days after McDonald’s CEO died of a heart attack last April that the firm’s ex-CEO for Japan did the same: 2
10/04Days since the U.S. government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0
11/04Minimum number of customers trampled to death in September at the opening of a Saudi Arabian Ikea: 2
12/04Number of U.S. terrorism trials brought before a jury since September 11, 2001: 1
12/04Weeks the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate spent staying in homeless shelters as part of her campaign tour: 2