4/85Pairs of toe shoes the New York City Ballet orders for principal dancer Suzanne Farrell each season: 350
6/86Number of New York City police officers who are members of the Screen Actors Guild: 350
8/91Average number of Israeli apartments damaged in each Scud attack before Patriot missiles were deployed: 219
1/95Estimated number of organizations that predict the millennium will bring “some form of Armageddon”: 350
4/96Estimated amount Steve Forbes spent campaigning before the Iowa Caucus in February, per Iowan who voted for him: $350
8/97Price California’s Fidelity Information Recovery service charges to send an “operative” to test a mate’s faithfulness: $350
3/98Price of a velvet-and-silk Chairman Mao jacket from Shanghai Tang, a new boutique on New York’s Madison Avenue: $350
5/99Number of subscribers to PursuitWatch, an L.A. paging service that alerts customers when a high-speed chase is televised: 350
2/01Number of articles published since 1998 containing the words “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 350
4/03Fine levied on three Norwegians in 2001 for throwing paper airplanes at the U.S. embassy: $350
8/99Weight in pounds of Thailand’s 1999 Jumbo Queen, displaying “the grace, elegance, and enormity of an elephant”: 352
10/03Number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last two years: 354
11/04Percentage change from 2000 to 2003 in the number of immigration appeals sent to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court: +355
7/08Number of Americans who gave the maximum legal donation to both McCain and Obama in the primaries: 359
7/94Number of guns manufactured in the United States each hour: 360
11/08Number of marijuana plants found under cultivation inside Miami’s Mall of the Americas in August: 360
8/90Number of Colombians killed by death squads last year because they were believed to be homosexuals or prostitutes: 364
Number this year: 370
7/86Number of patented life forms: 374
6/94Number of times Hector Montalvo, a New York City bank teller, has seen Cats: 374
1/01Number of land mines per square mile left behind in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces when they withdrew last May: 376
3/97Average number of 101 Dalmatians products introduced each day since the film’s release last winter: 380
1/08Estimated number of D.C. residents who are paid to stand in line for lobbyists hoping to attend congressional hearings: 380
Average amount each line-stander is paid per hour: $20
5/90Number of words in the English language that exist because of typographical errors or misreadings: 381
12/92Percentage change, since 1970, in the number of American women working more than one job: +390
10/01Number of people arrested at last year’s Republican National Convention: 390
10/93Number of jokes told about Bill Clinton this-year in the monologues of late-night network TV talk shows: 391
Number of jokes told about George Bush during his first six months in office: 60
9/84Infantry platoon leaders in the Marine Corps: 243
2/96Percentage change, since then, in the number of Americans undergoing credit counseling: +397
4/88Average number of Latin American Catholics who convert to evangelical Christianity each hour: 400
10/88Number of New York City public-school teachers who were assaulted on the job during the last school year: 400
12/88Estimated number of courses on “The Sixties” offered at American colleges and universities this year: 400
1/89Pounds of fish consumed each day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California: 125
Pounds of fish consumed each day at Le Bernardin restaurant in New York City: 400
5/90Ratio of Latin America’s total foreign debt to U.S. aid that President Bush has pledged to the region for next year: 400:1
1/91Percentage change in sales of the predictions of Nostradamus at Waldenbooks in the month after the Iraqi invasion: +400
11/95Estimated percentage change since 1991 in the number of Brazilian workers engaged in forced labor: +400
6/97Hourly fee paid the “ethics adviser” employed by Kenneth Starr during his first 19 months as Special Prosecutor: $400
11/99Percentage change since 1995 in the number of surgeons worldwide using maggots to cleanse wounds: +400
Percentage change since then in the number of U.S. troop deployments: +400
2/01Percentage change since 1987 in the jellyfish population off Louisiana’s coast: +400
5/02Estimated percentage by which British arms sales to African countries next year will exceed such sales in 1999: 400
5/06Estimated number of Ugandan prisoners who escaped in February while guards celebrated the president’s reelection: 400
4/89Number of babies to whom Volkswagen has given savings bonds, since 1964, for being born in one of its cars: 405
3/01Pounds of marijuana that a private company has been contracted to grow for Canada’s health ministry next year: 407
5/05Average number of Mexicans who have died each year since 2000 trying to cross to the United States: 407
6/89Number of African cichlid fish killed to make a suit worn by John Cleese in a photograph in Playboy last year: 412
Value of the average garden’s yield of fruits and vegetables: $414
9/98Price of a gold-plated crucifix pendant with a built-in alarm, from Britain’s Avon Silversmiths: $414
8/02Average amount by which the price a black American pays for a new car exceeds that paid by a white for the same model: $420
2/06Percentage change since 1996 in the amount that drug companies spend on direct-to-consumer advertising: +420
7/03Weekly wage above which new federal regulations forbid the payment of overtime in jobs requiring “talent”: $425
8/06Number of officers whose resignations the U.S. Army Reserve has refused since December 2004: 426
Of the Vietnam War: $430.2
Average last year: 436
11/93Amount Sammy Crabtree earned in August giving tours of Bill Clinton’s first home, which he owns: $437
8/99Number of live contraband Chinese chipmunks that the Dutch government ordered KLM to shred last April: 440
3/02Percentage change since January 2001 in the share price of the largest private prison-management company: +440
5/03Number of U.S. soldiers who faced disciplinary action between 1998 and 2000 for refusing an anthrax vaccine: 441
3/03Minimum number of federal lobbyists registered since 1999 whose interests cover “terror” or “security” issues: 444
11/04Weight in pounds of a “millionaire” seeking “Cinderella” in a New York magazine personal ad last summer: 444
10/94Number of transatlantic flights the Concorde can complete in the time required for Columbus’s first voyage: 448
3/02Percentage change since 1980 in the number of births of twins in the U.S. each year: +67
Percentage change since then in the number of births of triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, and sextuplets: +448
9/90Amount a paper shredder owned by Drexel Burnham was sold for at an auction of the company’s assets in June: $450
8/91Acres of land purchased for Maharishi Veda Land, a new-age theme park planned for Orlando, Florida: 450
1/95Price of a full halitosis-prevention exam and follow-up at the California Breath Center in Los Angeles: $450
5/95Membership of the British Old Bags Club, a group of middle-aged divorcees: 450
8/95Number of subscribers to Call of the Wind, a California paging service that alerts windsurfers to good conditions: 450
8/08Social Security number of Todd Davis, CEO of the identity-protection firm LifeLock: 457-55-5462
Months after he published the number as a dare to thieves that his identity was, in fact, stolen: 13
1/03Price charged by a Ukrainian company for a half-day tour of the Chernobyl nuclear-plant site: $460
8/04Price a Chilean cemetery charges for an alarm built into coffins to ensure against mistaken live burial: $462
8/97Number of consumer products O.J. Simpson plans to market under his six trademarks: 463
4/02Number of times between 1998 and 2000 that errors or irregularities forced publicly traded firms to restate earnings: 463
Number of times this happened in the seven previous years: 359
1/09Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466
3/00Minimum number of miles of West Virginia streams buried by mining waste since 1986: 470
12/01Percentage change since 1994 in the number of boys on competitive U.S. high school cheerleading squads: +470
2/08Number of suspected living Nazis still being hunted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “Operation Last Chance”: 488
7/07Number of postings by the U.S. State Department’s “digital outreach team” on Arabic websites this year: 490
5/00Number of presidential decrees Putin issued within two months of taking office last December: 491
4/94Ratio of the number of casualties in the 1988 Armenian earthquake to the number in Los Angeles in January: 492:1
3/93Percentage change, since 1990, in the number of illegal African immigrants arrested by Spanish border police: +494
3/08Chances that a rejected application for Social Security disability benefits is approved if appealed: 3 in 5
3/86Number of Americans who freeze to death each year: 500
11/86Percentage increase, since 1975, in the number of prime-time TV characters who are women over 50: 500
1/87Price of a 90-minute children’s birthday party for 30 guests at Jeremy’s Place in New York City: $500
10/87Maximum amount that entrants in the Homemaker of the Year contest may earn a year: $500
5/88Percentage increase, since 1986, in taxes paid by black South Africans: 500
10/89Weight of the Bridgeport, Connecticut, woman who killed her husband in July by sitting on him, in pounds: 500
11/90Price of a child’s bulletproof denim jacket from the Guardian Group in New York City: $500
3/93Average amount of his or her own money a U.S. public-school teacher spends on teaching materials each year: $500
6/93Price of a necktie made from whitewall tires, from One Song Enterprises of Willoughby, Ohio: $15.50
Length of its limited warranty, in years: 500
2/94Estimated number of recruitment letters sent by U.S.C.’s basketball coach last spring to prospect Avondre Jones: 500
4/94Number of copies of the Walsh report sold by the Government Printing Office since its release last January: 500
12/94Sheets of uncut dollar bills bought from the Treasury Department last year for use as wrapping paper by a Japanese florist: 500
8/98Estimated number of news stories published worldwide this year on India’s imminent nuclear-test plans: 500
8/99Tons of uranium from Russia’s nuclear arsenal that the country will sell to a U.S. company over the next twenty years: 500
1/00Estimated number of anti-slavery petitions sent to Congress between 1835 and 1836: 500
6/00Estimated number of “river pirates ” operating on New York City’s waterfront in 1850: 500
8/00Percentage of national forestland unprotected under the President’s proposed ban on forest-road construction: 78
2/01Minimum annual “baby bonus” that the government of Singapore pays couples who have a second child: $500
6/01Number of medical scholarships that Cuba announced it would offer U.S. minorities next year: 500
9/01Maximum fine in 1829 for teaching an African American living in Georgia to read or write: $500
9/05Minimum number of prescription drugs currently under investigation for Medicaid price-gouging or marketing fraud: 500
11/07Amount that a U.S. Army private paid a man to shoot him in the leg last July to avoid another tour in Iraq: $500
5/89Total number of deaths resulting from the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since December 1987: 432
Total number of homicides in Washington, D.C., since December 1987: 512
8/93Days elapsed between the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the first TV movie about it: 34
2/01Minimum number of limo rides illegally charged to the U.S. Postal Service by nine of its executives since June 1996: 520
5/89Number of years it would take to payoff the U.S. national debt at the rate of $10,000 per minute: 521
12/07Percentage change since 1990 in the number of pawn shops in New York City: +523
11/04Percentage change between 2002 and 2003 in the number of U.S. buttock-augmentation surgeries: +533
11/02Factor by which estimated homeowners’-insurance losses owing to mold have increased since 1999: 540
11/07Percentage change since the start of the Iraq war “surge” in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons: +50
10/92Number of the world’s 810 vampires who live in the United States, according to the Vampire Research Center: 550
12/95Number of Harvard Law students required to read Juice: The O.J. Simpson Tragedy last year: 550
2/96Estimated attendance at Jesse James’s third burial, held in Kearney, Missouri, last October: 550
7/97Number of romance novels Dame Barbara Cartland has written since 1923: 550
11/00Days by which a Texan’s prison sentence for candy-bar theft this year exceeded his sentence for marijuana possession: 550
10/97Average amount of pressure an American woman exerts on a stiletto heel, in pounds per square inch: 552
7/90Number of foreclosures initiated by the Farmers Home Administration during the first three months of 1989: 103
1/03Page of the No Child Left Behind education law passed last year on which this new requirement is noted: 559
6/06Length, in miles, of a barrier that Saudi Arabia has proposed to build in order to seal its border with Iraq: 560
Number of electronically controlled gates that would be placed along its length: 135
10/06Percentage change since 1999 in the number of consumer complaints about harassment by U.S. debt-collection agencies: +564
2/02Amount a nonprofit U.S. conservative group pays drug-addicted women to undergo sterilization: $200
1/87Number of newspapers sold each day, per 1,000 people, in the United States: 282
2/91Convicted drunk drivers in Orange County, California, since 1988, whose sentence included a tour of the morgue: 569
Number of repeat offenders among them: 1
3/08Percentage increase since 2001 in the amount the U.S. government has spent on paper shredding: +587
11/05Number of volunteers who are making personalized quilts for the next of kin of all U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq: 150
Current backlog of quilts they face: 588
10/98Price of a trench coat with a cell-phone-emission-proof pocket, from Barneys New York: $595
11/05Price to attend a sold-out “confidential,” “off the record” political forum with Robert Novak in September: $595
6/84Coffin manufacturers in the United States today: 400
11/87Tuition for a week at the Dollars ¢ Sense management camp for teenagers in Florida: $600
5/88Members of Colombia’s Patriotic Union party who have been murdered since it was founded in 1985: 600
Number of the party’s 87 mayoral candidates who were murdered in the six months prior to the March elections: 29
9/89Number of heads Saeed Al-Sayyaf, a Saudi Arabian executioner, has chopped off since he was hired in 1954: 600
Number of hands: 60
1/90Number of soup kitchens in New York City in 1980: 30
6/91Amount of chewing gum collected each year by the maintenance crew at the Statue of Liberty, in pounds: 600
7/91Percentage increase, since 1981, in the number of U.S. health- and life-insurance firms that have gone bankrupt: 600