4/84Years a Zimbabwean can be imprisoned for ridiculing President Canaan Banana: 5
12/84Estimated percentage of all U.S. defense contracts that are awarded through fully competitive bidding: 5
3/85Number of trench coats owned by Morley Safer: 5
Number in which U.S., British, or Canadian corporations own a controlling interest: 4
8/85Number of the ten most popular TV shows among families earning more than $30,000 that are on NBC: 5
10/86Percentage of Icelanders who say they believe in elves: 5
1/87Number of times Bill Cosby’s name is listed in the credits for The Cosby Show: 5
10/87States that have not outlawed cockfighting: 5
6/88Percentage of students at Dunkin’ Donuts University who do not pass the six-week training course: 5
9/88Number of the nine athletes that have appeared most frequently on the cover of Sports Illustrated who are white: 5
10/88Number of Japanese children who have died since 1985 as a result of disciplinary beatings by school personnel: 5
3/90Number of the chemicals used to make plastic that rank among the 6 leading producers of hazardous waste: 5
4/90Ratio of presidential press conferences held last year to presidential press conferences held in 1981: 5:1
Ratio of network TV news coverage of George Bush last year to coverage of Ronald Reagan in 1981: 1:3
6/90Members of the Panamanian cabinet who have owned or directed banks accused of laundering drug money: 5
7/90Average number of Latin American countries the United States has invaded and occupied each decade since 1900: 5
9/90Change, since 1972, in the percentage of employed American men who have an employer-financed pension plan: -5
Change in the percentage of employed American women who do: +5
10/90Number of minutes of Die Hard 2 watched this year by a congressional subcommittee researching computer terrorism: 5
11/90Percentage of Americans who say that the leftovers in their refrigerators are more than four weeks old: 5
8/91Ratio of the average amount of pesticide used on U.S. lawns to the amount used on U.S. cropland, per acre: 5:1
12/91Number of the 6 Democratic presidential candidates who say they support unconditional loan guarantees for Israel: 5
12/91Ratio of the Barbie dolls sold in the United States since 1959 to the number of Americans born since then: 5:1
6/92Number of days a Hamilton, Ohio, high school girl was suspended in March for accepting two Tylenol from a classmate: 5
9/92Number of the five states Al Gore won in the 1988 presidential primaries that are in the South: 5
10/92Ratio of New York Met Bobby Bonilla’s annual salary to the value of his weight in gold: 5:1
11/92Change, since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in the percentage of western Germans who say they suffer indigestion: +5
Change, since then, in the percentage of eastern German who say they suffer indigestion: -12
4/93Ratio of the number of women who deal with depression by eating to the number of men who do: 3:1
Ratio of the number of men who deal with depression by drinking or taking drugs to the number of women who do: 5:1
6/93Percentage of the papers presented to the Organization of American Historians in April whose subject is a historical figure: 5
6/93Average percentage increase in the bounce of a golf ball that has been passed through an electron beam accelerator: 5
7/93Number of five-inch South American grasshoppers found in Florida last year: 5
12/93Price of an authentic coroner’s toe-tag key chain from the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office gift shop: $5
1/94Number of fire bombings in Sacramento, California, since July for which the Aryan Liberation Front has taken credit: 5
4/94Points by which President Clinton’s January approval rating exceeded that of Ronald Reagan after one year in office: 5
12/94Maximum jail sentence, in years, for publicly denying the existence of the Holocaust, according to a new German law: 5
12/94Factor by which the mortality rate of homeless urban non-white Americans exceeds that of housed non-whites: 2
Factor by which the mortality rate of homeless urban white Americans exceeds that of housed whites: 5
Chances that an American sentenced for crack-related offenses is white: 1 in 25
2/95Number of the thirteen physicians running for Congress last year who won: 5
2/95Ratio of the number of Britons who blame Prince Charles for his failed marriage to the number blaming Diana: 5:1
5/95Holes in one that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il reportedly shot in a single round of golf last fall: 5
8/95Price of renting a duck to compete in the annual Great American Duck Race held in Deming, New Mexico, this month: $5
11/95Number of years by which Russian president Boris Yeltsin has outlived the average life span of a Russian male: 5
12/95Ratio of Americans who worry “a lot” about money and health insurance to those who worry about going to hell: 5:1
2/96Number of times reporters broke into laughter during a White House press briefing on Bosnia held last November: 5
3/96Estimated ratio of Steve Forbes’s net worth to all campaign contributions made to presidential candidates last year: 5:1
3/96Number of staff engineers and electricians retained by the White House during last fall’s government shutdown: 5
4/96Number of measures to forfeit congressional pay introduced in House committees during the government shutdown: 5
Number that made it to a floor vote: 0
7/96Seating capacity of the Ménage à Trois Chair, from Kinky Joe’s Erotic Furniture of New York City: 5
8/96Ratio of blank or “spoiled” ballots cast in the Israeli election in June to the number of votes by which it was decided: 5:1
11/96Percentage of Americans who believe politicians don’t grant special favors to large campaign contributors: 5
11/96Number of years Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has been a member of Greenpeace: 5
5/97Number of days before winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championship last winter that Tara Lipinski lost a baby tooth: 5
8/97Estimated number of days each year during which no major-league sports event takes place in the U.S.: 5
12/97Number of the world’s ten busiest McDonald’s franchises that are in Russia or Hong Kong: 5
3/98Factor by which California foreclosures last year exceeded those in 1990: 5
10/98Number of consecutive intercept tests failed by the Army’s $15 billion high-altitude anti-missile system: 5
Years behind schedule the system’s research-and-development program is running: 3.5
11/98Average number of Americans under the age of 18 killed by their parents or caretakers each day: 5
12/98Number of U.S. corporations that have signed up as Adopt-a-Minefield sponsors since the program began last December: 5
1/99Ratio of minutes that the three major networks spent on the Lewinsky story last fall to minutes they spent on Kosovo: 5:1
1/99Estimated number of colleges that Newt Gingrich’s high-school football coach queried in vain for a big enough helmet: 5
8/99Days it took Eleanor Roosevelt that year to decline an invitation to run for U.S. senator from New York: 5
9/99Length in minutes of Newt Gingrich’s monthly head massage at the Bubbles hair salon in Washington, D.C.: 5
1/00Number of popes stabbed, strangled, or poisoned to death in the last three decades of the 10th century: 5
3/00Factor by which online campaign contributions to Al Gore last year exceeded online contributions to George W. Bush: 5
3/00Number of times Elizabeth Dole mentioned Ronald Reagan in her endorsement of George W. Bush last winter: 5
4/00Number of face masks that Mexico’s Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos has worn out since 1994: 5
4/00Factor by which Africa’s cholera fatality rate exceeds the rate achievable with proper treatment and adequate sanitation: 5
6/00Number of “psychological operations” specialists that the U.S. Army sent to work for CNN last year: 5
6/00Years after the Great Potato Famine began that Britain loosened its land-ownership requirements for Irish voters: 5
8/00Distance that the silver-spotted skipper caterpillar can propel its own feces, in feet: 5
10/00Number of G.O.P. presidential conventions since 1911 with a larger percentage of black delegates than last summer’s: 5
10/00Minimum number of times that Senator John McCain winked while endorsing George W. Bush at last summer’s convention: 5
12/00Months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that the United States enacted a complete embargo on trade with Japan: 5
1/01Years that the United States spent fighting Lori Berenson’s life sentence in Peru before she won a retrial last fall: 5
2/01Number of years after fleeing Haiti in 1995 that death-squad leader Toto Constant was selling real estate in New York City: 5
2/01Maximum number of people who may legally congregate outdoors in Burma without government authorization: 5
3/01Hours it took Canadian election workers last year to hand count 13 million ballots cast in their general election: 5
5/01Percentage of a U.S. home’s electrical consumption accounted for by appliances that are switched off: 5
9/01Ratio of juveniles to police-officer”instructors” at a Florida sheriff’s 22-hour weekend boot camp: 5:1
10/01Minimum number of nations currently targeted by the United States ‘ integrated nuclear-war plan: 5
1/02Number of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 5
3/02Number of U.S. professional-sports stadiums whose corporate namesakes have filed for bankruptcy since December 1999: 5
3/02Total voting population of a Denton, Texas, tax district when a development plan was approved there in 1996: 1
Weeks before the vote that the resident was moved there by Dell Computer so that he could approve the plan: 5
5/02Hours for which New Orleans’s airport was partly evacuated in February over a package later found to contain gumbo: 5
5/02Number of times Marlboro cigarettes appear or are mentioned in the film In the Bedroom: 5
Number of product-placement deals the film’s producers made with Marlboro’s manufacturer: 0
6/02Percentage of Iranians and Kuwaitis, respectively, who say that the September 11 attacks were “totally justifiable”: 8, 18
Percentage of Americans who say this: 5
6/02Number of artists employed full-time by the Wall Street Journal to convert photographs into faux engravings: 5
6/02Amount of missing lunch money for which a Kansas City teacher strip-searched 23 third-graders in March: $5
7/02Rank of “no religion” among responses given in 1990 by Americans asked to identify their religious grouping: 5
9/02Ratio of military recruiters to college counselors at East Los Angeles’s Roosevelt High School: 5:1
7/03Hours Alexander Hamilton spent in 1787 arguing at the Constitutional Convention that America should have a king: 5
9/03Number of paragraphs devoted to global warming in the EPA’s 600-page “Draft Report on the Environment” of 2003: 1
Number of paragraphs removed by the White House before publication: 5
11/03Amount that a Louisiana preacher paid white people to integrate his Sunday services last August, per person: $5
1/04Ratio of the number of words in the last State of the Union address to those in George Washington’s first: 5:1
3/04Cost of testing each slaughtered U.S. cow for mad cow disease per pound of beef produced: 5¢
Ratio of the number of cows France tests each week to the number the United States has tested in the last decade: 7:6
12/04Minutes of weightlessness that Virgin Galactic passengers will experience on suborbital space flights in 2007: 5
4/05Maximum hair length for North Korean men, in centimeters, as prescribed by state media: 5
9/05Average number of $75 anal bleachings that an L.A.-area salon performs each day: 5
11/05Number of consecutive years that the U.S. median income has failed to increase: 5
2/06Monthly fee to add a “ virtual girlfriend ” game to an Ericsson mobile phone: $5
3/06Percentage of U.S. House contests in 2004 that were decided by fewer than 10 percentage points: 5
4/06Number of dogs that a California clinic trained to diagnose cancer by sniffing patients’ breath: 5
5/06Years that Hillary Clinton sat on Wal-Mart’s board of directors: 5
5/06Months after Hamas’s electoral victory that the only Palestinian brewery will release its nonalcoholic beer: 5
9/06Percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, in October 1994 who said they were excited to vote that year: 45, 30
Months before the vote that Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va. ) said he would “earmark the shit out of” legislation if his party won: 5
11/06Number of congressional resolutions proposed since 1989 that have contained the word “delicious”: 5
5/07Percentage of top Soviet officials under Mikhail Gorbachev who were drawn from the armed forces or security services: 5
Percentage of top Russian officials who have been under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, respectively: 47, 78
4/08Number of Ohio’s five voting-machine systems that had “critical security failures” in a state-commissioned study: 5
Number of the systems that have been removed from operation: 0
7/08Number of official corporate-sponsored events in this year’s Palestinian motor-racing season: 5
Number of racetracks in Palestinian territory: 0
8/08Percentage of all worldwide carbon emissions attributable to tourism: 5
8/08Years that the E.U. kept a secret list of items banned from air travel, before it agreed to publish the list this year: 5
11/08Minimum number of Brazilians running for political office this year under the name “Obama”: 5
1/09Minimum number of pheasant hunts Dick Cheney has gone on since he shot a hunting companion in 2006: 5
2/09Days after the Columbine shootings in 1999 that Eric Holder called for “regulations in how people interact on the Internet”: 5
12/00Average number of Palestinians killed per day by Israeli security forces in the six years preceding the 1993 Oslo accord: 0.4
Average number killed per day in the two weeks following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount last fall: 5.1
Average number of U.S. presidents a child can name: 4.8
4/85Percentage decrease in the gross national product of the Philippines in 1984: 5.5
12/85Percentage growth in West Germany’s gross national product in 1984: 4.6
1/02Last day on which a total tally of those detained in U.S. terrorism investigations was released to the public: 11/2
9/85After-tax profit margin of the average publicly held Japanese company (expressed as a percentage of sales): 1.4
Of the average publicly held U.S. company: 5.6
12/87Percentage of U.S. households in the Northeast in which a member was a victim of a violent crime in 1986: 3.7
Percentage of households in the West: 5.6
2/97Average percentage increase in the national homicide rate for everyone percent increase in the unemployment rate: 5.6
8/92Days it would take to exhaust Ross Perot’s fortune if it were used to pay the interest on the federal deficit: 5.7
4/00Total return on a dollar invested in the “socially responsible” Domini 400 Social Index in 1990: $5.75
3/84Strategic minerals supplied by the Soviet Union to the United States: 6
8/84Number of South African athletes who have changed their citizenship in order to compete in the 1984 Olympics: 6
8/84Number of the six highest-grossing films that were made by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or both: 6
8/84Percentage of the sexual acts depicted or referred to on prime-time TV that are between married partners: 6
1/85Number of the top ten military contractors that have paid no federal income taxes since 1981: 6
7/85Percentage of all money spent by American tourists in Britain in 1984 that was spent at Harrods: 6
9/88Average number of months that an American spends waiting for red lights to change, in the course of a lifetime: 6
10/92Number of times the National Geographic Society has revised its world map in the last six months: 6
5/86Number of banks in the West that are owned by the Soviet Union: 6
12/86Average number of fund-raising dinners held each night in Beverly Hills: 6
7/87Total amount of time Maj. Gen. Richard Secord has spent in Central America (in hours): 6
8/87Hours that Leave It to Beaver is on the air each week in Des Moines: 6
3/88Value of a B-1 bomber’s weight in silver, expressed as a percentage of an actual bomber’s cost: 6
4/88Estimated ratio of youth gang members to police officers in Los Angeles: 6:1
9/88Number of months it took Ronald Reagan to read Mikhail Gorbachev’s book Perestroika: 6
10/88Percentage of Americans earning less than $15,000 a year who say they have achieved the American Dream: 5
Percentage of Americans earning more than $50,000 a year who say this: 6
11/88Number of special-interest tax breaks in the Republican party platform that would benefit the oil industry: 6
11/88Members of Congress who have sent condolence letters to the families of the victims of the Iranian airliner crash: 6
10/89Number of states in which there are at least as many registered black voters as registered white voters: 6
10/89Estimated number of speeches Oliver North would have to give to earn the $150,000 he was fined in July: 6
2/90Ratio of U.S. emergency aid received by the Colombian military to aid received by the Colombian police last fall: 6:1
Ratio of the cocaine seized by the Colombian military to cocaine seized by the Colombian police in 1988: 1:4
3/90Number of shades of artificial blood sold by Cinema Secrets, a special-effects company in Burbank, California: 6
6/90Pages of guidelines the New York City Transit Authority sent to a Boy Scout who wanted to clean a subway station: 6
8/90Ratio of reported rape victims with incomes of less than $3,000 to those with incomes of more than $15,000: 6:1
11/90Price of a set of “RN” golf balls from the gift shop at the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California: $6