6/84Percentage decrease in television viewing in homes with personal computers: 40
8/84Percentage of Americans who say they have made changes in their lives to “get out of the rat race”: 40
6/85Percentage of New York City children who live below the poverty line: 40
7/85Number of children’s TV shows based on toys in 1983: 14
3/89Estimated number of countries in which foreign aid accounts for more than a quarter of the national budget: 40
11/93Number of hunters who have had their cremated remains loaded into a shotgun shell and shot at an animal: 40
9/87Percentage of the National Security Council’s staff that were military officers in January 1981: 18
6/88Percentage of British citizens who say that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom: 27
Percentage of political deaths in Northern Ireland, since 1969, that have been caused by the IRA: 40
6/88Percentage of dogs that are overweight: 40
9/88Percentage of all voters who had an unfavorable opinion of George Bush in July 1988: 40
12/88Percentage of child psychologists who advise parents of pre-school children to “confirm Santa’s existence”: 40
3/89Percentage of Iowa farmers who support an independent Palestinian state: 40
4/89Percentage of Americans who say “a good car mechanic is worth as much as a member of Congress”: 40
4/89Jail sentence a Tucson judge gave a lawyer last year for wearing green tennis shoes in his courtroom, in hours: 40
8/89Percentage of tropical fish owners in Iowa who say they would like their pets to be more affectionate: 40
Number of shootings in the final episode of Miami Vice: 40
9/89Amount Cleveland public high school students receive toward college tuition for every A grade they earn: $40
6/90Estimated percentage of all Spam sales in South Korea that are made on the black market: 40
10/90Number of National Guard officers assigned to monitor a Grateful Dead concert in Foxboro, Massachusetts, last July: 40
1/91Number of minutes Congress spent last October debating the administration’s request for new S&L bailout funds: 30
Number of minutes Congress spent last October debating a proposal to renovate the Capitol hairdressing salon: 40
6/91Percentage of all peanut butter that is chunky: 40
10/91Number of Americans who have contracted the AIDS virus from a health-care worker: 5
Number of American health-care workers who have contracted the AIDS virus from a patient: 40
1/92Percentage of U.S. infant formula sales that are. made to the government for distribution to the poor: 40
5/92Percentage of Americans who believe that U.S. cars built on Fridays have more mechanical problems: 40
10/92Breasts bared on a Canadian border bridge last July to celebrate New York State’s legalization of topless sunbathing: 40
11/92Percentage of the 417,000 jobs Bush says have been created this year that were government-financed summer jobs: 40
10/93Percentage of Missouri’s corn crop destroyed by rain and flooding this year: 40
11/93Percentage of the 500 Christian Coalition candidates running for political office last year who won: 40
2/94Estimated percentage change, since 1988, in the number of U.S. children enrolled in martial-arts classes: +40
6/94Percentage of all songs played on French radio after 1995 that must be in French, according to a new law passed this year: 40
1/95Average number of Washington, D.C., police officers arrested each year since 1989: 40
12/95Minutes after an Oklahoma prisoner was released from the hospital for a drug overdose that he was executed: 40
3/96Average age at which an actress won an Academy Award for a leading role during the 1980s: 40
3/96Number of high-resolution computer screens to be installed in Bill Gates’s new home: 40
4/96Percentage of American children of divorced parents who have not seen their father in the last year: 40
1/97Percentage of people who go to the bathroom in New York’s Penn Station who do not wash their hands: 40
2/97Number of seconds that the average person can wait for an elevator before becoming visibly agitated: 40
Number where the population’s poorest fifth pays the largest portion of income in sales, property, and income taxes: 40
8/97Estimated percentage change since 1996 in the number of Air Force pilots who have voluntarily left the service: +40
10/97Ratio of Americans earning less than $22,600 to those earning more than $246,000: 40:1
11/97Months after Paula Jones filed suit against President Clinton that the I.R.S. decided to audit her: 40
5/98Ratio of whales killed by Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick to people indicted by Kenneth Starr since 1994: 1:1
Ratio of the estimated cost of Starr’s investigation to projected ad sales for the last episode of Seinfeld: 1:1
Percentage of Americans who cannot name the allegation that Starr was initially appointed to investigate: 40
11/98Number of Tomahawk cruise missiles the U.S. could launch for the price of the Whitewater investigation: 40
12/98Number of countries whose “unsustainable” debt the World Bank identified as “in need” of relief in 1996: 40
9/99Percentage of white Pennsylvania men denied gun ownership between 1778 and 1789 for refusing a state loyalty oath: 40
10/99Percentage of Americans who say they’re not sure whether the U.S. or Slobodan Milosevic won the war in Kosovo: 40
8/00Number of semiautomatic paint-ball rifles ordered by the LAPD in preparation for this month’s Democratic convention: 40
1/01Percentage of Kuwait ‘s freshwater supply still contaminated with oil spilled by Iraqi forces during the Gulf War: 40
4/01Percentage change since 1980 in church contributions made per member to 29 major Protestant denominations: +40
Percentage change since then in the average amount per member these churches allocated to charitable work: +10
8/01Percentage of Americans who believe that Timothy McVeigh was acting as part of an as-yet-unidentified “larger group”: 40
8/01Estimated percentage of Colombia’s cocaine exports controlled by right-wing paramilitary leaders: 40
12/01Years after Ernest Hemingway killed himself that his transsexual son died last fall in a Miami women’s jail: 40
1/02Percentage of Navy recruits from the New York City area last year who were green-card holders: 40
7/02Percentage change in the number of prescription-drug products recalled by the FDA since 1998: +40
1/03Percentage of Gulf War veterans reporting chronic postwar symptoms who share a single bacterial infection: 40
12/03Number of refugees the United States accepted in the last year, expressed as a percentage of the legal maximum: 40
12/03Percentage of U.S. Muslims who said in 2000 that they would vote for George Bush: 40
Percentage who say this today: 2
6/04Percentage of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who lack regular access to food: 40
Percentage who are at risk of losing regular access to food if conditions there persist or deteriorate: 31
10/04Record number of skips achieved by a stone skipper: 40
8/05Number of New Orleans bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
9/05Percentage of Asian-Americans whose primary source of news is not in English: 25
10/05Years after the Watts riots that the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation trademarked “Burn Baby Burn” for a hot sauce: 40
12/06Percentage of N.F.L. fourth downs on which teams are better off “going for it,” according to a Berkeley study: 40
Percentage of fourth downs on which N.F.L. teams do go for it: 13
9/07Number of Brazilian farms whose pig waste a St. Louis company is using to generate electricity: 40
1/08Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40
4/08Percentage change last year in the number of Americans declaring personal bankruptcy: +40
12/08Percentage of Fortune 1000 companies that say a water shortage would be “severe” or “catastrophic” to their business: 40
Percentage that say they have made preparations for such a shortage: 17
1/09Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40
10/85Percentage of AIDS patients in New York City who aren’t homosexual: 41
10/86Percentage of Americans who say that some numbers are especially lucky for some people: 40
2/88Recipes in Aggies, Moms, and Apple Pie, a cookbook published by Texas A&M, that call for a can of cream soup: 41
4/89Percentage increase, since 1987, in the number of arrests for assault and battery in the Soviet Union: 41
10/91Number of generals who have retired from the U.S. Army since the end of the Persian Gulf War: 41
1/92Percentage of Russians who say that newspapers should be “mainly run by the state”: 41
2/93Percentage of former Yugoslavs seeking asylum that the United States has agreed to accept: 0.0016
11/93Percentage of Japanese workers who say they would be “at a loss if given a month-long vacation”: 41
11/93Percentage of economics majors at Ivy League colleges who say at least one of their parents has smoked marijuana: 23
4/94Percentage of all layoffs announced by U.S. companies in January that were in telecommunications: 41
3/95Percentage of Americans who believe that every holder of a Ph.D. has attended medical school: 41
6/95Points by which Bill Clinton’s approval rating in March 1995 exceeded Ronald Reagan’s in March 1983: 5
Points by which it fell short of George Bush’s approval rating in March 1991: 41
1/96Weight of evidence brought before the Senate Ethics Committee last year against Bob Packwood, in pounds: 41
3/97Average age of a member of one of the ten top-grossing rock-concert bands in the United States: 41
2/98Percentage by which the U.N. reported last year that it had underestimated the number of new HIV infections in 1996: 41
7/06Number of “peace walls” that divided Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast at the time of the 1994 ceasefire: 30
Number today: 41
3/07Percentage of U.S. military personnel in December who thought more troops should be sent to Iraq: 38
11/07Percentage of all race-hate crimes in L.A. in which the victims are Latino and the perpetrators African-American: 18
Percentage that are the reverse: 41
12/07Portion of all private insurance companies participating in Medicare that were audited in 2001 and 2006, respectively: 1/4, 1/7
Number of the forty-nine companies audited in 2003 that were found to have made major errors: 41
2/86Percentage of Americans who can’t name an Asian country “near the Pacific Ocean”: 42
10/86Percentage of first-year graduate students in physics at U.S. universities who are foreigners: 42
3/87Percentage change in the average fare per mile of air travel since deregulation: +42
10/87Percentage of Americans who believe that “some civil liberties must be suspended in the war on AIDS”: 42
7/89Percentage of their income American CEOs derived from stock options and other long-term incentives in 1978: 15
Percentage today: 42
5/90Percentage increase, since 1985, in the number of all-talk radio stations in the United States: 42
11/90Percentage of the Department of Energy’s proposed 1991 R&D budget that would be spent on defense: 42
1/93Number of states where a single parent earning 75 percent of the poverty level is eligible for welfare: 5
4/93Percentage of Americans who favor prenatal genetic manipulation to improve intelligence: 42
7/93Percentage of the French who say that the beheading of King Louis XVI in 1793 was “unjust,” “inexcusable,” or “revolting”: 42
11/93Percentage of the world’s cranberries that are grown in Massachusetts: 42
11/94Tons of carbon dioxide produced by one U.S. automobile in its lifetime: 42
1/95Percentage of Americans who said last October that they had “never heard of” Newt Gingrich: 42
6/95Average number of minutes an American father of a four-year-old spends alone with his child each day: 42
10/97Seconds of booing elicited by Apple’s announcement of its deal with Microsoft at a trade show last August: 42
4/98Percentage of Americans who believe that Jesus Christ sinned during his lifetime: 42
Percentage who believe that senators have “very high ethical standards”: 2
7/01Percentage of George W. Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration: 42
10/01Percentage of his presidency that George W. Bush has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 42
3/04Rank of Texas among states in which the largest percentage of citizens lack health insurance: 1
5/04Percentage of senior management positions in medium-size Russian companies that are held by women: 42
Percentage of senior management positions at equivalent U.S. companies that are: 20
9/06Minimum number of different U.S. government agencies that mine the personal data of citizens: 42
12/06Number of times President Bush has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable” so far this year: 42
Number of times he said this the previous three years combined: 33
Percentage today: 43
8/86Percentage of Americans between the ages of 15 and 19 who say they have shoplifted: 43
9/87Number of states that have paid more in taxes to finance SDI than they have received in SDI contracts: 43
12/88Number of times Abbie Hoffman has been arrested: 43
11/89Percentage of network news coverage of President Bush when he is out of the country that is negative: 19
Percentage of coverage when he is in the country that is negative: 43
12/89Total weight of the pages of advertising in the September issue of Vogue, in ounces: 43
Total weight of the pages of editorial content, in ounces: 14
3/91Amount of oil used by the Pentagon last year, expressed as a percentage of total U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia: 43
3/91Percentage of voters who say they don’t see any important differences between the Democratic and Republican parties: 43
6/92Percentage of black students in the Northeast attending public schools whose enrollment is 95 percent nonwhite: 43
8/94Percentage of Europeans who cannot name another European country they consider their “most reliable political ally”: 43
10/96Number of states in which local welfare reform was already legal before the passage of July’s welfare bill: 43
3/98Percentage change since then in the number of allegations of excessive force made against the city’s police: +43
8/99Percentage of the medical supplies bought since 1996 under Iraq’s oil-for-food program that has been distributed: 43
12/99Number of toxic spills reported within one mile of the Clintons ‘ new house in Chappaqua, New York: 43
1/03Percentage change since 1998 in the number of federal convictions for health-care fraud: +43
2/03Percentage of African Americans who have dated at least one white American: 43
Percentage of white Americans who have dated at least one African American: 17
4/03Percentage of California’s economy that is accounted for by agriculture: 7
Percentage of the state’s water that is used for agriculture: 43
6/07Percentage of white-collar Americans who brought work with them on vacation in 1995: 23
Percentage last year: 43
11/07Percentage change, since the beginning of the surge, in the number of internally displaced Iraqis: +43
2/09Percentage of Russians who say one goal of U.S. foreign policy is “the complete destruction of Russia”: 43
12/84Number of states in which some part of the B-1 bomber is manufactured: 44
Who don’t recognize George Bush: 44
7/88Percentage of executives who rank themselves as their “most trusted confidant in an ethical situation”: 44
5/86“Product categories” for which the 1988 Olympic organizers are selling official sponsorships: 44
4/87Percentage of Hispanics in California who voted to make English the state’s official language: 44