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
2/92Average attendance at the largest rally held by each Democratic candidate in New Hampshire last November: 350
Number of people who attended a Ralph Nader rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, last November: 600
7/92Estimated number of bills restricting abortion that have been introduced in state legislatures since 1989: 600
6/94Number of government employees Vice President Gore invited to accompany him on his trip to Russia last December: 600
Number this was reduced to after Ambassador Thomas Pickering complained: 200
7/98Factor by which the sweetness of Sucralose, a newly approved sweetener, exceeds that of sugar: 600
8/02Amount a Spanish inventor charges per month to lease a front-loading 37-nozzle pet-washing machine: $600
8/04Average number of feet by which each boat ramp into Arizona’s Lake Powell has been extended since 2002: 600
6/02Number of recommendations made by the S.E.C. since 1992 to file criminal charges against individuals: 609
Number of these recommendations that led to prosecution, conviction, and jail time, respectively: 189, 144, 87
6/06Number of state laws enacted since September 2001 that restrict access to information: 616
Number that broaden access: 284
8/00Percentage change since 1995 in the number of assaults against federal officers patrolling the California border: +617
6/93Price of golf, dinner, beer, and a “cart dance” by a topless female caddie at Fort Worth’s New Orleans Nights club: $620
12/06Number of incidences of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2005: 624
Number on shows the previous seven years: 110
9/04Number of deaths due to international terrorism last year according to an April State Department report: 307
10/89Airfare for a corpse on an American Airlines flight from New York City to Los Angeles, one way: $630
Airfare for a live person, round trip: $398
7/02Length in pages of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear-arms-reduction treaty signed by George H.W. Bush in 1991: 630
5/07Number of different Hindu rituals that Saranam.com will perform on one’s behalf at temples in India: 104
Price for the most expensive ritual, the three-hour Chandi Homam: $630
5/03Projected duration in years of John Cage’s “As Slow as Possible,” whose performance began last February in Germany: 639
Projected duration in months of the piece’s opening three-note arpeggio: 18
1/93Number of dummies on display at the Vent Haven Ventriloquism Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky: 642
4/01Amount by which federal taxes paid in states carried by George W. Bush fell short of federal spending in them, per capita: $645
6/95Percentage change since 1974 in the number of annulments granted to Catholic couples in the U.S.: +647
6/05Number of times that major U.S. newspapers have used the term “feeding tube” since January: 647
Number of times they had used the term in the previous five years: 483
4/91Number of cats the U.S. Army has shot in the head since 1983 in order to research battlefield injuries: 648
Estimated number in Papua New Guinea, which has the most: 648
6/89Maximum voltage of an Amazonian electric eel: 650
3/00Number of Parisians who break bones or are hospitalized each year after slipping on dog feces: 650
1/92Number of the 1,891 questions asked at presidential press conferences since, 1988 that dealt with domestic issues: 651
Ratio of the number of questions asked about the President’s health to the number of questions about health care: 2:1
4/08Prize that a British scientist is offering to anyone who breeds and raises a “Methuselah mouse” that lives five years: $660
5/94Number of people employed in the creative department of Hallmark Cards: 670
5/08Estimated number of 1950s suburban homes that Arizona has added to the National Register of Historic Places: 670
12/90Phone number for the hot line of the Society for Secular Armageddonism, in San Francisco: 673-3666
4/05Ratio of active workers at General Motors to retirees on its pension rolls: 2:5
8/93Percentage change, since 1980, in the number of U.S. residents who speak Mon-Khmer, a Cambodian dialect: +676
7/91Percentage increase, since 1988, in the number of cases of measles diagnosed in the United States: 680
5/89Amount of U.S. aid to El Salvador since 1980, per minute: $681
2/88Percentage increase, since 1981, in speaking appearances by Soviets on the network evening news: 682
4/01Amount by which federal taxes paid in states carried by Al Gore in 2000 exceeded federal spending in them, per capita: $685
12/96Estimated number of Americans hospitalized last year for injuries involving the ingestion of Christmas ornaments: 687
1/01Average annual number of male clients served in America in 1999 by each female prostitute: 694
2/85Members of the Abraham Lincoln Association: 375
Members of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation: 700
6/89Distance, in yards, from Walden Pond that developer Mortimer Zuckerman plans to build a corporate complex: 700
1/90Amount of U.S. military aid given to the government of El Salvador each minute during the 1980s: $700
3/94Percentage change, since 1991, in sales at Thailand’s 270 7-Elevens: +700
9/97Percentage change since last year in the number of suits filed against manufacturers of latex: +700
11/00Percentage change since last May in the number of injuries caused by foot-powered scooters in the United States: +700
2/08Minimum number of 9/11 memorials constructed so far in New York City: 700
8/07Number of Bush White House officials who are authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the Justice Department: 711
1/09Number of White House officials in 2006 and 2007 authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the DOJ: 711
3/98Number of Senior Entrepreneurship Interest patches sent to troop leaders last year by Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.: 723
2/86Coverage of South Africa in the New York Times in the month before the ban (in column inches): 727.5
In the month after the ban: 402
3/08Number of cases of alleged fraud in virtual worlds that South Korean courts have heard: 730
7/96Fine levied on a Swedish couple in March for naming a son Brfxxxcccxxmnnpcccclllmmnprxxvvclmnckssqlbb11116: $746
8/84Weekly rent for a one-bedroom oceanfront house on Martha’s Vineyard, in August: $750-$1,250
10/97Estimated number of U.S. deaths each year caused by autoerotic asphyxiation: 750
12/98Price that New York City’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum charges for an evening in a turn-of-the-century kitchen: $750
7/06Number of times that President Bush’s “signing statements” have exempted his administration from provisions of new laws: 750
Total number of times for all other presidents since Washington: 568
8/07Minimum price for a Disney World “VIP” tour, which includes a personal guide to negotiate the lines at rides: $750
4/99Number of people who died in police custody in South Africa last year: 758
Maximum number reported to have died in custody during any year under apartheid: 200
2/89Percentage increase, since 1978, in the number of private security firms operating in Colombia: 127
8/94Price paid at auction last year for Pete Rose’s good-behavior voucher from an Illinois minimum-security prison: $770
5/08Average number of passengers on Big Sky Airlines’ daily flight from Lewistown, Montana, to Billings last year: 2
Subsidy that the federal government paid the airline per flight: $770
8/84Number of Sunday newspapers in the United States in 1946: 497
1/04Percentage change since 1994 in the annual budget of the U.N.’s Balkan war-crimes tribunal: +780
10/00Number of U.S. houses that are really haunted, according to the Ghost Research Society: 789
9/06Minimum amount that an Arkansas mayor has discounted a prostitute’s city water bill since 2004 in exchange for sex: $790
1/86Number of South Africans whose race was legally reclassified in 1984: 795
4/92Average number of Americans who joined the Hemlock Society each month last year: 800
10/96Percentage change since 1992 in presidential campaign contributions made by the gambling industry: +800
10/05Percentage change since 2001 in the estimated value of all bribes paid to Russia ’s government officials: +800
Ratio last year of the estimated total bribes to the nation’s federal revenues: 5:2
12/06Amount a cable TV reporter paid a former Army interrogator to waterboard him in July: $800
Minutes into the waterboarding that a producer decided he had to stop it: 24
4/96Price paid for 6 vials of frozen sperm last April at a benefit auction for a Boston lesbian and gay health center: $825
Number granted for espionage investigations by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: 839
7/93Number of classified and restricted manuals used by the Department of Energy to specify what is to be classified: 850
9/93Average number of gun-license applications filed in South Africa each day this year: 850
6/98Number of jars of Exxon Valdez oil sludge sold by the state of Alaska since last November to help pay cleanup costs: 850
6/05Amount a Chinese online gamer made last year by selling a virtual sword he had borrowed from a friend: $850
7/86Abortions per 1,000 live births in New York City: 852
1/00Percentage change since 1990 in the number of prison beds in privately owned or managed U.S. prisons: +856
6/01Number of members of Congress or their staffers who failed to file a tax return or pay back taxes in 1999: 856
8/94Samples of sand from the world’s beaches in the collection of Gilbert Brim, of Vero Beach, Florida: 863
3/95Amount by which the average salary of a Republican House staffer last year exceeded that of a Democratic staffer: $871
7/84Number of delegates to the 1984 Democratic National Convention not chosen in a primary or caucus: 873
10/00Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission: $874
12/99Percentage change in the number of joint ventures signed between Cuba and foreign companies since 1992: +886
6/98Number of cars broken into by bears last year at Yosemite National Park: 889