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
5/94Percentage of Americans who say that women “sometimes deserve to be hit by their husbands or boyfriends”: 12
Percentage who say that men “sometimes deserve to be hit by their wives or girlfriends”: 29
8/95Average percentage change, since NAFTA went into effect, in top executive salaries at the 26 largest U.S. firms in Mexico: +29
6/97Estimated percentage of all goods and services produced worldwide last year that came from Asia: 22
12/97Percentage change since 1995 in total soft money raised nationally in the first six months of the election cycle: +29
7/98Percentage of Americans who say they are confident that passenger trips to the moon will occur in their lifetime: 29
Percentage who say they are confident that Social Security will provide them with “significant” income: 26
7/98Percentage of U.S. plant species cited as “threatened by extinction” by the World Conservation Union last April: 29
Hours after this announcement that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt declared war on weeds: 5.5
8/98Number of days after July 4, 1776, that the majority of signatures were appended to the Declaration of Independence: 29
7/00Average annual number of civilians killed by New York City police under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: 23
8/02Number of students at Illinois’s Aurora University who have earned academic credit for a course in “business golf”: 29
5/03Estimated percentage by which the average U.S. gasoline price would rise if costs of securing oil were recouped with a tax: 29
10/03Percentage of Iraqis who said in July that they would rather live under the Americans than under Saddam Hussein: 29
12/03Days after a 1961 meeting with Khrushchev that President Kennedy leaked claims of U.S. nuclear-missile superiority: 29
4/04Percentage of U.S. voters whose 2004 vote will be cast via a computer system producing no paper record: 29
12/06Number of worldwide incidents last Christmas of “Santarchy,” which involves roving mobs of unruly Santas: 29
Number of fruitcakes that drunken Santas catapulted into the air at the event in Portland, Oregon: 6
3/07Percentage of the world’s fished species that have lost at least 90 percent of their peak populations: 29
5/08Percentage change since then in the African-American population of nearby exurban Riverside County: +29
8/08Number of times per year that Canada’s defense ministry requires a think tank it funds to be mentioned in the press: 29
Number of op-ed pieces the think tank’s staff must publish, including letters: 15
2/09Percentage of U.S. school districts that have banned bake sales due to anti-obesity regulations: 29
5/94Price of an electronically animated bluebird, featuring “digitally recorded birdsong,” from The Sharper Image: $29.95
2/06Price for a vibrator that plugs into an iPod and “stimulates you in time with your favorite music”: £29.99
7/84Number of countries whose armed forces are combating a revolutionary or separatist insurgency: 30
Percentage of requests by Salvadorans: 3
Percentage of requests by Nicaraguans: 14
4/85Percentage increase in South Korean exports to the United States in 1984: 30
Yearly percentage growth in the U.S. population: 0.9
5/85Percentage increase in members of Manhattan’s West Side Rifle and Pistol Range since the Goetz shootings: 30
9/96Price per hinge the company had originally charged before deciding its subcontractor was “too slow”: $30
2/87Price of a 30-minute swim with dolphins at the Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Center in Key Largo: $30
10/88Number of minutes each day that a working couple spend in “meaningful conversation” with each other: 4
3/89Amount of time it takes to ride the entire length of the New York City subway system, in hours: 30
11/89Number of people who have died in police custody in New York City this year: 30
4/90Number of times President Bush used the words family, children, and kids in his State of the Union address: 30
7/90Percentage of parents who say they want the option of having their child’s school photograph retouched: 30
7/90Price of a full back-waxing for men at La Carezza in New York City: $30
1/91Number of White House changes incorporated into the civil rights bill before the President vetoed it last fall: 30
1/91Percentage of black New Yorkers who believe it is possible that AIDS is a plot to kill blacks: 30
9/91Percentage of the business loans made in the United States last year that were made by foreign-owned banks: 30
10/91Percentage of American men who say they have fantasized about having sex with a fictional TV character: 30
2/93Number of minutes it took an Australian man to give away the $1 million he won in a lottery last year: 30
3/93Percentage discount a California bookstore offers on maps or guides to any country that has “recently disappeared”: 30
7/93Estimated number of body parts suitable for piercing, according to Gauntlet, a New York City jewelry store: 30
9/93Maximum number of feet at which a car stereo may legally be audible in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as of June: 30
11/93Number of camera crews at the L.A.P.D.’s first press conference about charges made against Michael Jackson in August: 30
4/94Number of women a Texas company fired last year after O.S.H.A. ordered it to build more women’s rest rooms: 30
11/94Tons of talonas, Lithuania’s temporary currency since 1992, that have been converted into toilet paper this year: 30
12/94Number of Haiti’s 42 leaders since independence who have been murdered, deposed, or forced to flee the country: 30
4/95Number of times Governor Pete Wilson has declared a state of emergency in California since 1991: 30
4/95Percentage of Americans over the age of 65 who say that color is a “very important” factor in buying underwear: 30
Percentage of American adults under the age of 30 who say this: 11
7/96Percentage by which federal funding of legal services for the poor was cut last April: 30
8/96Days in jail to which a Pennsylvania man was sentenced last March for repeatedly oinking at his ex-wife: 30
9/96Amount by which the Naval Academy’s cost of producing a gallon of milk exceeds the average wholesale price: 30¢
10/97Years from now, “in a perfect world,” that no tobacco manufacturers would exist, according to the Liggett Group’s CEO: 30
1/98Number of years of legal action it took to get the CIA to release the annual US. intelligence budget last October: 30
1/98Number of foreign embassies that received G.O.P. fund-raising letters last October seeking $5,000 donations: 30
1/98Price a Nova Scotia artist charges for a silver necklace with a pendant cast from an antidepressant pill: $30
1/99Price of a day’s excursion at Obertraun Schilcherhaus, an Austrian resort offering nude cross-country skiing: $30
3/99Number of times one New Jersey high school was evacuated in the last school year due to bomb threats: 30
5/99Days the President should spend in jail “simply for hitting on a dog like” Paula Jones, according to O.J. Simpson: 30
4/00Minutes of pregame snowball making allowed in the International Snow Battle Contest held this month in Finland: 30
8/00Estimated number of years it will take to remove the 600,000 active mines in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 30
9/00Percentage of newborns in India who would qualify for intensive care if they were born in California: 30
12/01Price per family that a Puerto Rican company charged last December for a 5-minute stay in a refrigerated snowscape: $30
4/02Minutes before the President spoke at a jobs program last winter that protesters heard the event had been canceled: 10
Days later that he presented a budget proposal cutting the funding of such programs by 80 percent: 30
7/02Minutes after a tornado hit Shiloh, Illinois, in April that the town’s warning siren sounded: 30
12/02Number of “sub-harm”suicide”gestures” made this year by detainees held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay: 30
3/03Percentage of Shakespeare’s sonnets that contain at least one economic metaphor: 30
7/03Number of American states that have revoked helmet requirements for adult motorcycle riders since 1975: 30
10/03Years after the Watergate break-in that deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder admitted hearing President Nixon order it: 30
1/04Estimated number of times a one-year-old was bitten by his peers at a Croatian day-care center one morning last fall: 30
1/04Days that the NYPD suspended a cop without pay last winter for refusing to arrest a man for sleeping in a parking lot: 30
11/04Number of states in which voters can cast ballots in advance by mail or in person without providing a reason: 30
11/04Number of U.S. McDonald’s franchises whose drive-through order taking has been outsourced to another state: 2
Average number of seconds by which orders placed at these franchises are processed more quickly than at others: 30
4/05Percentage of Social Security contributions that go toward administrative costs: 0.6
5/05Percentage of Filipino couples who “do not know how pregnancy happens,” according to the country’s health minister: 30
9/05Average amount an Ohio man paid children to berate him for being obese, until he was arrested in April: $30
7/06Percentage by which Britain’s The Independent outsold its daily average on May 16, the day U2’s Bono was guest editor: 30
6/07Percentage of U.S. households that will have a Nintendo Wii by 2011, according to Merrill Lynch: 30
1/08Number of the 194 nations in the world that have had one or more female heads of state since 1900: 30
3/08Percentage of full-time university faculty in 1992 who taught less than four hours per week: 15
Percentage today: 30
9/08Days in jail that Canton, Ohio, now imposes on repeat offenders of the city’s lawn-mowing requirement: 30
1/09Number of feet the Ground Zero pit has been built up since the site was fully cleared in 2002: 30
3/09Percentage of residents of former Communist-bloc nations who say they live better now than in 1989: 30
4/87Percentage of Iowans who say they would rather spend a weekend in Des Moines than in San Francisco: 31
Number today: 31
1/88Percentage of telephones that are in the kitchen: 31
Percentage who say they would vote for a homosexual: 26
9/88Number of major league baseball games that were rained out in the first half of the 1987 season: 18
9/88Reported cases of toothbrush swallowing in Durham, North Carolina, since 1981: 4
9/91Percentage of Fortune 1000 companies that offer paternity leave: 31
Percentage of eligible American men who take paternity leave: 1
7/92Days after the Kent State killings in 1970 that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released their song “Ohio”: 31
11/94Percentage of Americans who say they would vote for Dan Quayle over Bill Clinton if the election were held today: 31
11/95Percentage of Americans with a household income between $5,000 and $10,000 who voted last year: 23
4/98Number of Astoria Federal Savings ATMs in New York City at which transactions may be conducted in Yiddish: 31
4/99Number of U.S. companies and groups licensed to sell merchandise bearing the Vatican’s Jubilee 2000 logo: 31
Number funded “in memory of Alfred Nobel” by the Bank of Sweden: 31
Factor by which annual U.S. military aid to Colombia has increased since then: 31
7/01Percentage of Americans living below the poverty line who believe that “poor people today have it easy”: 31
11/02Places by which Russia’s ranking in the U.N.’s Human Development Index of living standards has fallen since 1990: 31
10/03Percentage of U.S. doctors who say they have not told patients about a treatment because their insurance didn’t cover it: 31
9/04Number of states whose legislatures have considered requesting changes in the No Child Left Behind Act: 31
7/05Minimum number of Exxon Mobil-funded groups that have disputed mainstream scientific findings on climate change: 31
3/06Percentage of African-American families that have zero or negative net worth: 31
11/08Number of times that speakers at the Republican National Convention said the word “economy”: 31
Number of times they referred to President Bush by name: 1
12/84Percentage of Americans who, in 1981, thought their chances of surviving a nuclear war were fifty-fifty: 32
10/85Percentage increase in capital spending by businesses during the first Reagan Administration: 23.4
During the Carter Administration: 32
4/87Percentage of American car buyers who say they enjoy haggling with the dealer over price: 32
6/87Percentage change, since 1986, in the number of Americans who say the U.S. is apt to spread disinformation: +32
12/87Number of U.S. cities and towns named Santa Claus: 3
2/89Percentage of Gilligan’s Island episodes that were about getting off the island: 32
2/93Percentage of incarcerated burglars who say they looked at their victims’ family photo albums: 32
11/93Estimated number of comic strips in which Lucy has snatched a football from Charlie Brown, mid-kick: 32
5/94Percentage of American adults who believe that if they used a personal computer they would damage it: 32
6/94Percentage of registered Republicans who favor ending the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba: 32
8/94Number of writers who contributed to the screenplay of The Flintstones: 32
4/01Number of accidents involving U.S. nuclear arms between 1950 and 1980, according to the Pentagon: 32