7/84Number of Rolls-Royces in the Soviet Union: 10
2/85Percentage decrease in articles by British scientists in the 2,000 leading scientific journals, from 1973 to 1980: 10
4/85Percentage of Thai women between the ages of 15 and 30 who are prostitutes: 10
11/85Percentage of all federal judges appointed by President Reagan who graduated from Ivy League law schools: 10
12/85Percentage of homeowners in California who have earthquake insurance: 10
10/97Number of months the system has been unable to link the AID’s 40 field offices to the agency’s accounting program: 10
11/08Percentage of former terrorist groups worldwide that stopped operating because of military force used against them: 7
Percentage that stopped because they had achieved their stated goals: 10
1/86Members of the North American Deer Farmers Association: 10
2/86Percentage of the Philippines’ 300 government-owned corporations that are headed by Imelda Marcos: 10
1/87Percentage of Americans who believe AIDS can be contracted by handling money: 10
5/87Rank of U.S. stock markets, among markets worldwide, in percentage gain since 1982: 10
9/87Paces at which the crunch of a pickle should be audible, according to Pickle Packers International: 10
12/87Estimated percentage of parents who, after prenatal testing, decline to learn the sex of their child: 10
4/88Percentage of the Soviet Union’s population that was killed in World War II: 10
8/88Number of the 23 daily newspapers in New York City that are published in English: 10
In the United States: 1:10
6/89Price of a two-hour walking tour of famous murder sites in Manhattan, given by Sidewalks of New York: $10
9/89Price of a flame-retardant American flag from the Freedom Writer group of Great Barrington, Massachusetts: $10
6/90Tons of weapons Fidel Castro brought with him to Brazil’s presidential inauguration ceremonies in March: 10
6/90Acres of mirrors in Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City: 10
2/91Estimated number of times last fall that George Bush told a joke about his dog asking for a wine list with her Alpo: 10
3/91Ratio of the number of profanities uttered by actors to the number uttered by actresses in films released in the 1960s: 10:1
9/92Number of public schools that will be run this year by Education Alternatives, a private Minneapolis company: 10
10/92Number of pages in Doubleday’s new 7,035-page, six-volume Bible dictionary that are devoted to sex and humor: 10
3/93Number of the ten largest U.S. military contractors who contributed to Les Aspin’s last congressional campaign: 10
3/93Number of times fashion model Iman was interviewed about Somalia on national TV news shows last year: 10
11/93Number of hamburgers called for in White Castle’s recipe for turkey-stuffing: 10
12/93Pages of forms an applicant must fill out to be considered for the position of elf at Macy’s: 10
2/94Royalty paid to Charles Manson for each T-shirt bearing his likeness sold by Zooport Riot Gear in California: 10¢
3/94Maximum number of four-legged pets a resident of West University Place, Texas, is allowed to own: 3
7/94Number of participants in the annual Sidewalk Egg-Frying Contest held in Oatman, Arizona, last July 4: 10
8/94Number of guests who witnessed Justice Clarence Thomas perform Rush Limbaugh’s wedding ceremony last May: 10
9/94Maximum sentence, in paddle strokes, proposed for underage vandals in a bill before the California legislature: 10
10/94Number of “translators” commissioned last year by a Yale divinity student to convert the Bible into Klingon: 10
11/94Number of congressional races this year in which both major-party candidates are women: 10
12/94Weeks in jail served by a Polish journalist in 1992 for calling Solidarity leaders “politicos,” “careerists,” and “dopes”: 10
12/94Number of blocks from Tiffany’s that thieves tried to sell goods stolen from the New York store this fall: 10
2/95Ratio of American households whose income taxes have been cut since 1992 to those whose have been raised: 10:1
4/95Percentage of Americans who say they would allow their spouse to have sex with a stranger in exchange for $1 million: 10
7/95Gallons of onion ice cream sold last summer at Vidalia restaurant in Washington, D.C.: 10
9/95Days after the Pentagon announced in June that it didn’t need more Stealth bombers that the House voted to fund more: 10
11/95Estimated number of years that Ireland’s Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams received British public assistance: 10
3/96Number of the 24 Mexicans who were billionaires in 1994 who still are: 10
4/96Ratio of the projected construction cost of the L.A. subway system to the cost of one space-shuttle launch: 10:1
5/96Months since the House Commerce Committee’s staff scientist post was filled by a Dow Chemical lobbyist on leave: 10
7/96Number of German police officers who will live with immigrants in Bonn for a week this year for “sensitivity training”: 10
8/96Months after a child molester was paroled from prison in 1994 that a VA hospital gave him a penile implant: 10
5/97Percentage change since 1995 in the average tooth-fairy payment, per tooth: +10
11/97Number of months former senator Pat Schroeder has been a contributing editor of Glamour: 10
4/98Number of CAT scans a Minneapolis radiologist performed last year on violins: 10
6/98Ratio of applicants to slots for DigiPen Institute’s new degree program in video-game design and computer animation: 10:1
10/98Percentage by which HMO Kaiser Permanente estimates that covering Viagra would drive up its pharmacy costs: 10
7/99Number of years that the U.S. military has been using video games to train soldiers to kill: 10
3/00Factor by which average air-pollution levels inside a moving car on an L.A. highway exceed those outside the car: 10
6/00Number of years Karl Marx spent writing opinion pieces for the New York Daily Tribune before publishing Das Kapital : 10
10/00Average number of corpses per acre at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm,” for the study of decomposition: 10
12/00Number of couples who will each receive $5,000 this year from IUMA.com for naming their baby Iuma: 10
3/01Number of players on Spain ‘s gold-winning disabled Olympic basketball team recently found to have faked their disabilities: 10
8/01Number of the U.N.’s 21 human-rights agreements that have been ratified by the United States: 4
Number of the U.N.’s 31 global environmental agreements that have been: 10
11/01Number of business days given Nevada citizens last summer as notice of the only public hearing on the 7,300-square-foot site: 10
Estimated number of minutes after the cat was released on its first test run that it was killed by a taxi: 10
8/02Days that a U.S. soldier was investigated in May for calling Bush”a joke” in a letter to a newspaper: 10
10/02Size in acres of a billboard that a Chinese town is constructing next to its ancient giant Buddha: 10
11/02Maximum milligrams of speed prescribed to U.S. pilots by military doctors during the Persian Gulf War: 5
Number of these that are among the world’s five largest arms-manufacturing countries: 4
10/03Percentage of Palestinians in refugee camps who say that given a choice they would live nowhere but Israel: 10
4/04Amount spent worldwide on mobile-phone ring tones, expressed as a percentage of the global music market: 10
Profits he reaped: $9.50
6/04Average number of people who die every day in Bombay commuter-train accidents: 10
7/04Seconds it took a Maryland consultant last winter to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10
9/04Ratio of the typical salary of a paid gladiator in ancient Rome to the salary of a doctor or lawyer: 10:1
11/04Factor by which the annual number of Sahara dust storms has increased in the last 50 years: 10
3/05Number of plastic surgeries undergone by the winner of last year’s “Miss Artificial Beauty” pageant in China: 4
Number undergone by the runner-up: 10
4/05Minimum number of octopuses catapulted in protest at a French McDonald’s last year: 10
5/05Number of the top-ten states for bankruptcy filings per capita that voted for President Bush: 10
12/05Number of Alabama state senators co-sponsoring a bill last summer to “protect” public displays of the Ten Commandments: 10
Number of them who could list the Commandments: 1
2/06Percentage of the air-ambulance helicopters in the U.S. that have crashed since 2000: 10
5/06Weeks in advance that Al Qaeda operatives must request vacation time, according to seized documents: 10
6/06Factor by which total U.S. student loans from private lenders last year exceeded the amount in 1995: 10
6/06Ratio of negative portrayals of teachers on U.S. children’s TV shows to positive portrayals: 3:1
Ratio for portrayals of adults in general: 10:1
12/06Minimum number of checkpoints Mary and Joseph would face today on their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem: 10
5/07Percentage of soldiers given medical discharges in 2001 who were given permanent disability benefits: 10
Percentage in 2005 who were: 3
10/07Number of the seventeen Islamic universities in sub-Saharan Africa that have been founded in the past ten years: 10
11/07Average number of hours of housework that a boyfriend in a cohabiting couple does each week: 10
1/08Percentage of Americans who say they are willing to have an Internet-access device implanted in their brains: 10
7/08Minimum number of times since 2000 that McCain has voted against increased funding for Veterans Affairs: 10
1/09Seconds it took a Maryland consultant in 2004 to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10
3/86Percentage of its income a family of four living at the poverty level paid in federal taxes in 1980: 1.9
11/85U.S. spending on health care in 1960, expressed as a percentage of the gross national product: 5.3
6/85Cost of having a car blessed at the Daishi Buddhist temple in Kawasaki, Japan: $10.77
2/86Coverage of South Africa on ABC’s evening news in the month before Pretoria’s media ban (in minutes): 10.8
In the month after the ban: 3.2
5/85Journalists killed in Latin America in 1984: 11
11/85Number of Fabergé Imperial eggs owned by Malcolm Forbes: 11
By the Kremlin: 10
12/85Percentage of Americans who regularly buy a publication or watch a TV station owned by Rupert Murdoch: 11
Percentage who say the automobile is: 10
6/88Number of the 26 journalists murdered last year who were killed in the Philippines: 11
10/88Number of the 90,000 Illinois marriage-license applicants screened for AIDS this year who tested positive: 11
1/90Percentage of all blacks who voted in the 1984 presidential election who were first-time voters: 11
1/90Number of times since 1987 that President Reagan has been quoted as saying “dovervai no proveryai” (“trust but verify”) in the New York Times: 11
3/90Percentage change, since 1980, in federal spending on research and development of renewable energy sources: -84
Percentage of U.S. electrical power that comes from renewable resources: 11
4/90Number of the 11 magazine articles about lottery winners published in 1989 that ran in Jet magazine: 11
2/91Projected average speed of cars on California’s highways in the year 2010, in miles per hour: 11
7/91Number of professional baseball players who have named a child after Texas Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan: 11
4/92Average tax break President Bush’s proposed capital-gains tax cut would give Americans earning less than $50,000: $11
10/92Rank of the United States, among the 12 largest democracies, in voter turnout for presidential elections: 11
5/93Percentage of female congressional staffers who say they have been sexually harassed by a congressman: 11
3/94Change, since 1982, in the number of developing countries under military rule: +11
3/94Number of high-level aides to California senator Dianne Feinstein who quit during her first year in the Senate: 11
8/94Amount by which the number of countries where Coca-Cola is sold exceeds the number that belong to the U.N.: 11
11/94Number of diagrams included in the pamphlet accompanying Reality, the “female condom” that went on sale in August: 11
11/94Number of natural disasters worldwide since 1987 that have cost insurers more than $1 billion: 11
2/95Number of the 15 former Soviet republics whose national legislatures are dominated by ex-Communists: 11
4/95Number of government-run injection rooms, or Fixerstübli, available to heroin addicts in Switzerland: 11
5/95Number of black jockeys who won the Kentucky Derby during its first twenty-eight years: 11
Number in the ninety-two years since then: 0
6/95Percentage of white Americans who believe their race hinders their ability to achieve the American dream: 11
1/96Percentage of Americans who believe officeholders engaged in a “serious debate” of Medicare last year: 11
5/96Number of years Bryn Mawr College has held an annual Mayhole Celebration, “a feminist takeoff on the maypole”: 11
12/96Weeks after Russian president Boris Yeltsin had a heart attack last summer that the CIA found out about it: 11
4/97Average grade level at which a Washington, D.C., inmate can read: 5
Average grade level at which he or she left school: 11
8/97Number of soldiers and veterans who testified last June that Timothy McVeigh was a model soldier: 11
10/97Percentage of Americans earning more than $246,000 who met Bill Clinton last year: 11
5/98Percentage of parents who say that they would abort a fetus found to be predisposed to obesity: 11
6/98Number of cities that require companies receiving public funds to pay a “living wage” above the federal legal minimum: 11
8/99Number of days it took the German army to conquer Yugoslavia in World War II’s “Operation Punishment”: 11
12/99Average number of U.S. cruise missiles launched per month during the Clinton Administration: 11
12/00Rank of Bill Clinton among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren: 1
Rank of the Pope, J. K. Rowling, and God, respectively: 2, 13, 19
Rank of “myself”: 11
1/01Ratio of Britain’s per capita health-care spending to that of Cuba: 11:1
5/01Percentage of total U.S. electrical consumption accounted for by commercial lighting: 11
7/01Percentage change in the size of Colombia’s coca crop since its “Plan Colombia” coca-eradication campaign began in 1999: +11
9/01Minimum number of countries in which at least half the children are no longer in school by the age of eleven: 11
11/01Weeks before the World Trade Center attack that Ariel Sharon referred to Yasir Arafat as “our bin Laden”: 11
2/02Ratio of U.S. public high schools named after Abraham Lincoln to those named after Jefferson Davis: 11:1
5/02Days after September 11 that New Jersey’s Iman Abdallah applied to trademark the phrase “Let’s roll”: 11
Days later that the foundation named for the man who immortalized the phrase applied to trademark it: 4
6/02Date on which the first CD of the Brooklyn rock band I Am the World Trade Center was released: 5/8/01
7/02Number of years that a member of the Council on Foreign Relations has authored Parade magazine’s celebrity-gossip column: 11
9/02Radius, in miles, around this year’s G8 summit in Canada within which unauthorized persons were not allowed: 2
Distance, in miles, from the summit to the area where demonstrations were allowed: 11
3/03Percentage change in the size of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve under George W. Bush: +11
Percentage change in the size of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve under Bill Clinton: -5
8/03Percentage of Americans who say they have “always had credit card debt”: 11
9/03Percentage of the first month of British sales of the new Harry Potter book accounted for by “adult” editions: 11
9/03Age at which Katharine Hepburn made her acting debut, as the beast in a charity production of Beauty and the Beast: 11
10/03Percentage points by which George Bush Sr.’s approval rating in August 1991 exceeded his son’s last August: 11
1/04Number of press conferences at which President Bush has referred to a question as a “trick”: 11
5/04Months into the war in Iraq that all U.S. personnel there were equipped with antiballistic body armor: 11
1/05Minimum number of Al Qaeda suspects from overseas whom the United States has now “disappeared ,” by legal standards: 11
9/05Number of times that the U.N. has extended its peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone: 11
10/05Months of vacation that President Bush has taken in five years: 11
2/06Minimum number of Iraq war veterans who have declared they are running for Congress this year: 11
2/07Average duration, in years, of the 130 civil wars fought worldwide since 1945, according to a Stanford professor: 11
4/07Number of bathrooms in John Edwards’s new North Carolina home: 11
11/07Percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. has “already achieved victory in Iraq”: 11
9/08Number of celebrities to whom Burger King has given a lifetime supply of free hamburgers: 11
7/01Average amount that workers in one El Salvador factory are paid for each $12.99 Gap T-shirt they sew: 11.6¢
In 3 ounces of Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream: 7.5
5/84Percentage change in U.S. video game sales, 1982-83: -10
In adult board game sales: +12