For workers in the Soviet Union: 15
12/84Percentage of Americans who believe their presence at a sports event influences its outcome: 25
2/85Percentage increase since 1980 in U.S. military recruits who hold high school diplomas: 25
9/85Percentage change in the buying power of a Social Security check since 1970: +25
9/85Percentage of Nicaragua’s exports bought by Japan in 1980: 3
11/85Percentage of Fortune 500 companies that tested employees and job applicants for illegal drug use in 1982: 10
Percentage that test today: 25
2/86Percentage of acknowledged male homosexuals who are fathers: 25
3/87Average interest rate charged on bank credit cards: 17.83
Percentage of Americans who say they don’t know the interest rates charged on their credit cards: 25
3/88Percentage of contributors to George Bush’s 1988 campaign who gave $250 or more: 25
4/88Number of times that Richard Gephardt used the word “Establishment” in his Iowa stump speech: 25
In his New Hampshire stump speech: 3
4/88Percentage of Americans who watch an evangelical religious program on television at least once a week: 25
11/88Estimated number of times George Bush recited the Pledge of Allegiance in the month following his nomination: 25
12/88Percentage of American families whose net worth is less than $10,000: 25
2/89Percentage of state and local district attorneys who say that marijuana should be decriminalized: 25
2/90Estimated amount it will cost the Nicaraguan government to hold the elections scheduled for this month, per voter: $14
Average monthly income of a Nicaraguan: $25
3/90Average percentage increase in the protrusion of a woman’s buttocks when she wears high heels: 25
8/90Percentage of all savings and loan associations that failed during the Depression: 5
Percentage that the government expects will fail in the next five years: 25
5/91Percentage of U.S. hospitals that do not require that patients be told if they test positive for the AIDS virus: 25
7/91Estimated black-market price, in California, of a state-issued handicapped-parking permit: $25
8/91Percentage of Americans who believe they have healed physical ailments “using the power of mind”: 25
1/93Percentage of TV viewers who say they wouldn’t give up watching TV in exchange for any amount of money: 25
9/93Estimated number of nuclear reactors it would take to supply the energy consumed by U.S. refrigerators: 25
2/94Price of a one-page “Florid to Torrid” love letter, from New York City’s Do the Write Thing: $25
8/94Average amount left by the tooth fairy in 1969, per tooth: 25¢
Average amount left today: $3.30
10/94Ratio of worldwide military spending, per soldier, to educational spending, per school-age child: 25:1
3/95Amount by which the weekly pay of a full-time minimum-wage worker exceeds the poverty level: $25
6/95Number of Ho Chi Minh scholarships awarded to students last year by a community college in New York City: 25
10/95Price of a 4-ounce bottle of shampoo containing a chemical cloned from human sperm, from a Beverly Hills boutique: $25
11/95Average life span, in years, of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon: 25
11/96Price of a dozen rolls of “Helms Happens” toilet paper: $25
12/96Points by which Washington Monthly editor Charles Peters says his IQ exceeds that of John F. Kennedy: 25
4/97Estimated number of Cobra attack helicopters privately owned by Americans: 25
11/97Price a Dallas firm charges for a 60-minute tour retracing JFK’s 1963 motorcade route in a period convertible: $25
3/98Value of the food and medicine purchased since December 1996 with Iraq’s “Oil for Food” proceeds, per Iraqi: 25¢
10/98Number of fishing rods and tackle boxes that can be checked out of Georgia ‘s Tybee Island public library: 25
2/99Percentage by which box-office receipts at theaters running the new Star Wars trailer rose on the day of its appearance: 25
Portion of the audience at New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre that day who left before the feature film began: 1/3
8/99Number of CIA laptops containing top-secret information sold inadvertently at a government-surplus auction in 1995: 25
8/00Percentage of public relations executives who say they have “had to lie ” in the course of their jobs: 25
4/01Years before a British official was killed in Athens last winter that a CIA bureau chief was killed there with the same gun: 25
5/01Minimum number of Las Vegas casinos that use face-recognition technology to identify known card cheats: 25
2/02Total annualized percentage return on New York City’s stock markets on perfectly sunny days between 1982 and 1997: +25
12/02Average number of miles by which the magnetic North Pole moves each year: 25
12/02Days it takes an adult in Los Angeles to breathe in more air pollution than EPA guidelines recommend for a lifetime: 25
2/03Percentage of Moscow residents who say that city residents from Chechnya or the rest of the Caucasus should be expelled: 25
5/03Average factor by which levels of uranium in the urine of Afghan test subjects last fall exceeded normal: 25
6/03Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games: 1
4/04Factor by which a blimp being developed for the U.S. government by Lockheed Martin exceeds the size of Goodyear’s: 25
7/04Number of publications on women’s rights that the Labor Department has removed from its website since 1999: 25
1/05Percentage “more intelligence” given up by prisoners in Iraq since coercion of them was banned, according to a U.S. general: 25
3/06Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld ’s vacation home: 25
6/06Amount a Pennsylvania T-ball coach paid a player last year to hit an autistic teammate with a ball: $25
Number of these courses that broke the law by being primarily devotional and sectarian, according to a September study: 22
5/08Percentage, in a recent study, by which the average weight gain of rats eating saccharin exceeded that of rats eating sugar: 25
1/09Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games: 1
3/01Percentage of Washington children who completed an 8-year antismoking program in the 1990s who now smoke regularly: 25.4
11/92Average cost of a homemade Thanksgiving meal for ten: $25.95
6/84Percentage of voters who say they are more likely to vote Democratic in November if a woman is on the ticket: 26
9/86Percentage of teenagers’ favorite songs that they say are about sex, violence, satanism, or drugs: 7
Percentage they say are about love: 26
10/87Minutes Jerry Falwell spent soliciting contributions during the average Old Time Gospel Hour in July: 26
3/89Average number of calories burned during an “extremely passionate” one-minute kiss: 26
Number of calories in a Hershey’s Kiss: 25
2/90Percentage of the value of all foreign-owned U.S. real estate that is owned by Japanese companies: 15
Percentage of the value of all foreign-owned U.S. real estate that is owned by Canadian companies: 26
2/90Number of brand-name products that appear in Back to the Future, Part II: 26
2/91Percentage change, in the last year, in the number of home-equity loans made by American banks: +26
3/91Percentage increase, during 1991, in the number of people seeking emergency food aid in U.S. cities: 26
7/93Average decrease in the number of minutes women spend on housekeeping for every hour spent at a paying job: 26
9/93Percentage change in the number of racial-harassment complaints filed: +26
7/94Number of physicians who are running for the U.S. House or Senate this year: 26
10/94Percentage of Americans who believe that the world will be “better off” in the year 2000: 26
11/94Chances that a U.S. teenager has not spoken to either parent for more than ten minutes during the last month: 1 in 5
4/95Percentage of Americans whose homes are equipped with a padded toilet seat: 26
1/96Number of days after escaping a Danish prison last August that an inmate asked to be allowed back in: 26
Number today: 26
2/96Years in jail a California man was sentenced to last year after his third burglary offense, the theft of four cookies: 26
7/98Percentage of African Americans who say they have never heard of Kenneth Starr: 26
Percentage of all American adults under the age of 33 who say this: 21
6/99Percentage of Alabamans who oppose removing the state’s constitutional ban on interracial marriage: 26
3/00Percentage of the senior editorial staff of Talk magazine that has resigned since the magazine’s debut last summer: 26
12/00Days after his appointment last July that Japan’s top finance regulator resigned over “suspicious” payments he’d received: 26
3/03Minimum number of times since 2000 that U.S. news stories have described Al Gore as “president in exile”: 26
7/03Vote in April by which the North Dakota Senate upheld the state’s 1890 ban on cohabitation by unmarried couples: 26-21
1/04Number of political candidates murdered during Colombia’s regional election campaigns last year: 26
8/04Number of World Trade Centers under development worldwide since September 2001: 26
Number of them that are in Saudi Arabia: 3
Number of times they have called him a “warrior intellectual” or “warrior scholar”: 26
12/08Percentage of Fortune 500 companies that own a Web address in which their name is followed by “sucks.com”: 26
6/85Percentage of black high-school graduates under 25 who are unemployed: 26.8
Percentage of white high-school dropouts under 25 who are unemployed: 26.2
10/84Percentage of American women who think they would do “better than average” in a fistfight: 27
3/85Percentage of married women in the United States who say they have been raped by their husbands: 14
Who own U.S. government securities: 27
11/86Percentage of Iowans whose drinking water contains traces of one or more pesticides: 27
5/87Amount Britain’s Labour Party proposes to pay students 16 and older to stay in school (per week): £27
Today: 27
10/87Number of revolutions that Polish journalist Rvszard Kapuscinski has witnessed: 27
In public and private spending among the top 12 trading partners of the United States since 1982: 15
12/88Number of Wisconsin’s 33 state senators who voted in favor of a 1988 bill that allows the blind to hunt: 27
6/89Average ratio of students to teachers in an American public school classroom in 1955: 27:1
Average ratio today: 18:1
9/89Percentage of college students who say “the higher the tuition, the better the quality of the education”: 27
In the United States: 2
11/90Percentage of GOP state chairmen who say they would prefer someone other than Dan Quayle’ on the ticket in 1992: 27
3/91Estimated average number of seconds it takes a New York City thief to break into a locked car: 27
7/92Percentage of male college students who believe that life is “a meaningless existential hell”: 27
5/93Average distance between two conversing people that black Americans consider comfortable, in inches: 22
8/95Percentage of contributions to the Republican National Committee since 1993 that were of $1,000 or more: 7
Percentage of contributions to the Democratic National Committee that were: 27
12/96Number of its employees the Library of Congress has forced to take psychological exams since 1990: 27
7/98Number of animals that died in accidents at Disney’s new Animal Kingdom park before it opened last April: 27
12/01Estimated percentage of U.S. electricity demand that could be met by covering the nation’s roofs with solar panels: 27
2/02Percentage of oil imported by the U.S. last year that came from Persian Gulf countries: 23
9/02Number of square feet of retail space per American: 27
5/07Percentage of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 27
Percentage of African Americans who have not: 20
8/08Percentage of U.S. homeowners who reported last year that they had bought a car using a home-equity loan: 27
8/99Circumference in inches of the biceps of the G.I. Joe Extreme doll introduced last year, if he were six feet tall: 27.3
1/94Cups of iceberg lettuce one must consume in order to satisfy the minimum daily requirement of any vitamin: 27.5
Cups of spinach one must consume in order to satisfy the minimum daily requirement of any vitamin: 1.3
3/01Percentage of global economic activity accounted for by the world’s 200 largest corporations: 27.5
Percentage of the world’s population that these corporations employ: 0.8
7/84Percentage of American women who consider themselves pretty: 13
Percentage of American men who consider themselves handsome: 28
5/85Percentage of mothers who do not receive the court-ordered child support to which they are entitled: 28
1/86Percentage of liberals who say they’ve gone skinny-dipping: 28
Percentage of conservatives who say this: 15
3/87Percentage of French men who say they would like to see Princess Stephanie pose nude in a magazine: 28
2/89Number of years Steve Jenne of Springfield, Illinois, has saved a buffalo sandwich bitten into by Richard Nixon: 28
6/89Number of states in which a family of four earning less than $12,000 per year is required to pay income tax: 28
7/91Percentage of Americans who say they develop nervous tics under stress: 28
9/91Percentage of American women who say they have listened in on their husband’s phone calls: 28
6/92Number of new Ku Klux Klan groups formed in the United States last year: 28
4/93Percentage of the parts in each new Chrysler Concorde, “the renaissance of the American car,” that are imported: 28
3/94Number of Clinton appointees found to be delinquent in paying social security taxes for domestic workers: 28
6/94Ratio of the amount President Clinton spent on polling last year to the amount spent by George Bush in 1989: 28:1
1/95Number of domestic-violence counselors the NFL sent to its teams’ training camps last year: 28
8/96Percentage of Republicans who said in May that the party’s platform should “remain silent” on abortion: 28
11/96Years before becoming the prime minister of Britain that John Major was “on the dole”: 28
3/99Number of American children crushed to death by television sets since 1990: 28
1/00Months’ worth of salary lost by Groucho Marx in 1929’s stock market crash: 28
1/00Days of imprisonment and torture undergone by Niccolò Machiavelli after falling out of favor with the Medicis in 1513: 28
Number of years later that his book The Prince was published, with a dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici: 19
4/00Number of days a Norse woman incubated a bird’s egg between her breasts last spring before giving up: 28
11/00Percentage change in per capita U.S. sugar consumption since 1982: +28
4/01Average number of people killed in Laos each year since 1973 by U.S. bombs left over from the Vietnam War: 28
6/04Minimum number of the brand names mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses that are still extant: 28
Number of the brand holders that are sponsoring Dublin’s centennial Bloomsday celebration this month: 2
6/05Average number of hours it takes to read a weekday Washington Post out loud: 28
1/98Average number of performance days lost per high-school cheerleading injury each year: 28.8
1/85Percentage of women executives who say they prefer a male boss: 29
1/86Cost of leasing one New York State sugar maple tree for one sap season: $29
9/86Percentage of Americans who say they have been “moved to tears” by a greeting card: 29
2/87New business activities the Soviet Union will allow individuals to engage in for profit beginning May 1: 29
12/87Percentage of women in two-income families who say they “almost always” prepare the tax returns: 29
2/88Hand-carved marble columns in the living room of Donald Trump’s Trump Tower triplex: 29
8/88Percentage of Americans who say they saw Dan Rather’s January interview of George Bush live on TV: 29
Percentage who actually did: 13
9/88Percentage of voters who had an unfavorable opinion of Walter Mondale in July 1984: 29
2/89Total time that the song “Yesterday” has been broadcast or performed since it was written in 1965, in years: 29
3/90Percentage of U.S. insurance companies that say they “consider sexual orientation in underwriting”: 29
7/90Percentage of American children under the age of 6 who say that the first U.S. flag was sewn by Betsy Ross: 15
Percentage who say it was sewn by Barbara Bush: 29
5/91Number of articles in the New York Times this year that have included the phrase “mother of all”: 29
12/93Average number of pounds lost by a member of the Biosphere 2 team during the first two years of the project: 29
Percentage of Americans who say this: 4