5/04Median household income a pair of U.S. single mothers would have if they married each other: $40,568
9/92Number of people who attended the World Grits Festival, held in St. George, South Carolina, last spring: 60,000
10/92Average annual salary Zabar’s delicatessen in New York City pays lox slicers with at least ten years’ experience: $60,000
2/95Number of marijuana plants for which a grower may be sentenced to death under the crime bill passed last fall: 60,000
6/95Copies of the premier issue of the Russian-language edition of Cosmopolitan sold in Russia last summer: 60,000
3/97Amount the Library of Congress spent last year to create a braille edition of Playboy: $60,000
2/98Estimated gallons of jet fuel required to send Al Gore to Kyoto’s Global Warming Conference last December: 60,000
4/99Estimated attendance at a rally for debt relief for poor countries held outside Britain’s 1998 G-7 summit: 60,000
10/01Number of “useless laws” that Italy’s new prime minister promised to eliminate if elected: 60,000
9/03Estimated number of soccer balls the U.S. government sent Iraq this summer to help “bring life back to normal”: 60,000
8/00Number of leaf-cutter ants required to lift a 10-pound picnic basket: 60,133
8/89Amount an unemployed graduate is seeking in a consumer-fraud suit against Goddard College: $61,500
10/95Amount an auditor estimated last year that Oregon could save each year by feeding prisoners less food: $62,000
4/00Age in years of the first baby born in Denmark last January, according to the hospital’s computer: 100
Number of Americans who are at least this old: 62,000
4/85Number of manufacturing jobs New England has gained since 1982: 64,650
8/97Estimated number of former Nazi SS officers or their dependents receiving a pension from the German government: 65,000
Number of them who live in the U.S.: 3,377
2/04Number of disabled Californians whose home aid Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to eliminate: 65,000
3/09Number of exotic marine animals that a new Dubai hotel keeps in its 3 million gallons of decorative tanks: 65,000
6/05Number of merit badges in Safety awarded to Boy Scouts since 2001: 15,417
Number in Shotgun Shooting: 65,249
5/08Number of Silicon Valley workers earning between $30,000 and $80,000 who have lost their jobs since 2002: 62,000
9/02Minimum number of U.S. companies, individuals, and organizations that are licensed to possess radioactive material: 67,000
2/02Pages of Reagan White House archives to be kept from the public indefinitely by order of President Bush last October: 68,000
10/07Number of copies Pope Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth has sold in the United States: 68,000
Estimated number of pieces of silver that could be bought with the royalties: 21,250
8/87Amount the Tobacco Institute donated to underwrite the antidrug booklet Helping Youth Say No: $70,000
9/93Number of East Germans who have joined Weight Watchers since 1990: 70,000
12/02Number of names on the State Department’s list of “suspected terrorists”: 70,000
11/02Number of Australians who listed “Jedi” as their religious affiliation on the country’s 2001 census: 70,509
11/95Price Fiji began charging this year for guaranteed citizenship to each Hong Kong resident who wishes to move there: $70,970
3/89Amount antique dealer Malcolm Willits received from the sale of six secondhand Oscars in the last year: $71,740
3/09Minimum number of U.S. homeowners whose banks improved their mortgage terms in the first quarter of last year: 73,000
Percentage of them who were a month or more behind on their payments six months after the relief: 55
1/94Amount the Miami tourist bureau will spend this year on public-relations “crisis management”: $75,000
9/94Amount Wayne Newton spent last year refurbishing his pet penguins’ pond on his Nevada ranch: $75,000
11/97Factor by which Forbes magazine’s estimate of the net worth of Russia’s security chief exceeds his own: 75,000
10/98Number of calls made last year to the Social Security Administration’s fraud hotline: 75,000
Amount recovered as a result: $55,900
2/90Amount a federal legal-aid program spent last year on a legal brief arguing that the program was unconstitutional: $77,000
8/89Pounds of toxic chemicals released during each space-shuttle launch: 77,000
6/92Average monthly contributions to the Women’s Campaign Fund since Anita Hill’s testimony last October: $78,471
Number of Americans who served in World War II and were declared missing in action: 78,751
8/87Campaign contributions made by George Bush’s PAC to Iowa and New Hampshire state candidates in 1986: $80,000
2/88Amount that Bryan Miller, the New York Times food critic, spends on restaurant meals each year: $80,000
9/93Daily wage the Israeli government pays Palestinians banned from working in Israel to sweep the West Bank: $9
Number of brooms the government has sent to the Occupied Territories since the ban took effect in March: 80,000
8/05Number of new U.S. soldiers the Army would need in 2006 to replenish ranks abroad: 80,000
Percentage of this goal it expects to meet: 9.9
4/96Price paid at auction last June for the two fiberglass tablets used in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments: $81,700
4/93Number of announced layoffs reported in the New York Times in January: 83,103
Today: 12,000
2/93Number of subscribers to The Tightwad Gazette: 85,000
8/96Square footage of parking lot that Chicago Democratic Convention planners have designated as a protest area: 85,000
9/84Cost to consumers of “protecting” one job in the automobile industry via import restrictions: $85,400
3/96Cost of Spike Lee’s two courtside seats at New York Knicks home games during the regular season: $86,000
12/01Maximum number of gallons of oil stored under the World Trade Center on a given day: 86,000
5/95Boxes of cookies the Washington, D.C., Girl Scouts must sell each year to cover their liability premiums: 87,000
10/02Number of U.S. soldiers missing in action since 1945: 88,135
7/03Amount of the $106,185 price of a Hummer H1 that businesses may deduct under the proposed Bush tax plan: $88,722
6/84Annual earnings, including overtime, of a Carnegie Hall stagehand: $90,000
6/04Number of Americans who died in 2002 from infections they contracted while hospitalized for other ailments: 90,000
2/01Pages of documents related to racial profiling by New Jersey State Police released by the state last year: 91,000
6/08Number of Iraqis who receive regular payments from the U.S. government in exchange for not fighting: 91,600
6/08Number of poor Oregonians who have entered the state’s health-care lottery system: 91,675
12/93Price of a life-sized computer-controlled triceratops, from the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue: $93,000
Factor by which this exceeds the total sales of the seventeen books by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee: 4
4/00Gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico this year after an oil rig’s anchor punctured an underwater pipeline: 94,500
11/93Amount Americans have spent this year on bullets fired from the gun used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald: $95,000
1/05Estimated value of a diamond-and-sapphire jewelry set given to Laura Bush in 2003 by the Saudi crown prince: $95,500
1/94Profits earned last year by two men selling used girls’ underpants from vending machines in Japan: $96,000
5/02Shipments of nuclear waste to be trucked cross-country once Nevada’s Yucca Mountain dump opens in 2010: 96,000
Annual number of “accidents or incidents” that Nevada estimates these trucks will be involved in through 2048: 54
8/05Acres in Israel to which a born-again Christian from Texas bought oil-exploration rights in 2000: 96,000
Chapter and verse of Deuteronomy that he says predicts his success, because of the phrase, “let him dip his foot in oil”: 33:24
5/84Average income of American physicians: $99,500
3/87Market value of an airline landing slot at LaGuardia Airport in New York City: $25,000
4/87Amount Sotheby’s estimates the Bible President Reagan sent to Iran would bring at auction: $100,000
10/89Amount the U.S. Postal Service spent last year to maintain mules to deliver mail in the Grand Canyon: $100,000
1/90Estimated number of plant and animal species that have become extinct since 1980, worldwide: 100,000
6/90Number of shares of his Chrysler stock that Lee Iacocca has given away during the last 12 months: 100,000
8/90Amount the U.S. Air Force spent this year to study the effects of jet noise on pregnant horses: $100,000
9/90Rickshaws the city of Jakarta, Indonesia, has dumped into the ocean since 1985 to reduce traffic congestion: 100,000
3/91Number of muscles in an elephant’s trunk: 100,000
6/91Amount of cash CNN reporter Peter Arnett says he wore sewn into his clothes while covering the Gulf War: $100,000
8/91Federal funds the National Cancer Institute will spend this year interviewing Latin American tribal healers: $100,000
5/93Number of deeds to a square inch of land in each of the fifty states bought by Chinese citizens last year: 100,000
11/93Amount the CIA will spend this year to buy back each Stinger missile it gave to Afghan rebels during the 1980s: $100,000
3/95Minimum price of a competition-level koi, a Japanese show carp, from Konishi Koi Farm in Hiroshima: $100,000
2/96Income at which North Carolina Representative Fred Heineman believes the lower middle class begins: $100,000
Chances that an American worker’s annual income falls short of this: 39 in 40
11/98Amount for which a North Dakota town has agreed to rename itself after a brand of schnapps for four years: $100,000
5/01Number of visitors since 1999 to a Lithuanian theme park depicting life in a Stalinist gulag: 100,000
3/02Year in which a Pentagon report warned that banning chlorine sales to Iraq would cause epidemics of waterborne diseases: 1991
9/03Amount Thailand has promised to pay survivors of anyone who dies of SARS contracted there: $100,000
11/03Campaign contributions that one voting-technology CEO raised to become a Bush “Pioneer” this year: $100,000
2/05Amount that makers of the video game JFK Reloaded will pay the player who best replicates the murder of Kennedy: $100,000
9/06Estimated number of Americans who get degrees each year from nonaccredited “diploma mills”: 100,000
Number of Pentagon employees who had such degrees on their résumés, in a recent congressional study: 257
10/96Units of public housing the federal government plans to demolish by the year 2000: 100,920
Units it plans to construct by then: 24,679
2/97Price paid at an Indiana auction last September for a 1975 Ford Escort previously owned by Pope John Paul II: $102,000
Percentage change since last year in the number of Americans who say they would require $1 million to do so: +75
10/05Number of “veterans of the global war on terrorism ” that the VA budget assumed for 2005: 23,553
Estimated number today: 103,000
12/98Maximum income that an Aspen, Colorado, resident may earn in order to be eligible for subsidized housing: $104,000
11/91Population of Abkhazi, the smallest ethnic group in the Soviet Union to declare its independence this year: 105,000
10/06Salary of the White House’s new Director for Lessons Learned: $106,641
5/97Amount the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe took from its welfare fund last year to donate to the DNC: $107,000
11/87Amount paid at auction for the hunting permit to kill one bighorn sheep in Montana in 1987: $109,000
11/89Estimated number of calories a person consumes during Thanksgiving dinner: 2,250
Estimated number of calories a Thanksgiving turkey consumes in its lifetime: 110,000
9/99Estimated rounds of ammunition bought by the City University of New York since 1995 to train its security force: 110,000
4/00Number of flowers that prison inmates plant each spring at the Illinois State Fairgrounds: 110,000
6/87Amount the Air Force has spent since 1981 on matchbooks and playing cards for Air Force One and Two: $115,634
2/88Cars abandoned on New York City streets last year: 116,765
12/93Estimated cost of treating an American with HIV from the time of infection until death: $119,000
12/99Number of dogs and whores of whom Yasir Arafat is the son, according to Syria’s defense minister: 120,000
10/06Estimated amount that a farmed tiger could fetch if sold for parts, according to an Indian free-market think tank: $120,000
Number that the Defense Logistics Agency has requisitioned since: 9,000
5/97Amount Burt Reynolds owes his toupee maker: $121,796.62
11/90Attendance at a “reenactment” of the Panama invasion, at McChord Air Force Base in Washington last July: 125,000
1/91Endowment of the Jackie Mason Lectureship in Contemporary Judaism at Oxford University: £125,000
3/96Estimated minimum amount Forbes would save in personal income tax under the flat tax he advocates: $129,000
Average amount spent lobbying one: $130,000
12/91Amount the EPA will spend this year to research the role of livestock flatulence in global warming: $130,000
1/93Votes cast in November for Absolutely Nobody, a candidate for lieutenant-governor of Washington: 130,438
9/05Number of Danish graduate students who last December released a copyright-free recipe for an “open-source beer”: 15
12/03Spending Winston Churchill approved in 1943 to research making an aircraft carrier out of ice and wood pulp: $136,000
5/03Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan’s government: 138,722
4/08Estimated number of wild New York City pigeons illegally caught and sold to shooting clubs each year: 144,000
3/84Movie theaters in the United States: 16,901
In the Soviet Union: 144,100
11/05Salary of a new State Department job created, in Secretary Rice’s words, to “accelerate the demise” of Castro’s regime: $145,000
4/93Fee Paramount paid a Los Angeles psychologist last year to tailor a script “to the needs of a mass audience”: $150,000
8/05Number of Iraqi troops that have been “trained and equipped,” according to President Bush in April: 150,000
Number that the U.S. military considers ready to deploy independently: 1,500
10/06Amount the Alaska Zoo paid last year to build a treadmill for its 8,000-pound elephant: $150,000
5/92Miles of fiber-optic cable laid last year, worldwide: 150,416
2/08Government salary at which Bernard Kerik in 1999 said that he felt like he was on “welfare”: $150,500
4/99Number of times a Florida Fox-TV station asked 2 reporters to rewrite a news story on Monsanto in 1997: 83
Amount the station offered the reporters to quit their jobs and keep silent after the news story was killed: $151,250
2/08Number of votes tallied in an online Greenpeace poll last fall to name a humpback whale in the South Pacific: 152,000
Percentage that favored the name “Mr. Splashy Pants”: 79
9/90Number of snails that animal-rights activists liberated from a snail farm in England last March: 153,000
2/01Pages of Haitian government documents that the United States has held since seizing them from the country in 1994: 160,000
9/03Price a San Diego physicist paid at auction in June for mechanisms used to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: $167,000
11/02Estimated number of U.S. high school graduates who will forgo college this year solely for financial reasons: 168,000
9/89Average change, in 1988, in the top executive’s salary at companies that laid off at least 1,000 workers: +$174,000
6/86Number of people who try unsuccessfully to get President Reagan on the telephone each year: 175,000
12/90Number of new businesses that have been started in Poland this year: 175,000
Number of businesses that have folded: 147,000
2/94Amount a Chicago woman won last year after suing her former fiancé for breaking their 7-week engagement: $178,000
11/98Amount that CBS is paying Rome’s Atlante Star hotel to use its rooftop view of St. Peter’s when the Pope dies: $180,000
6/92Amount H. Ross Perot and his family members have contributed to candidates for federal office since 1979: $180,650
3/88Number of privately owned machine guns in the United States: 183,895
4/86Amount the IRS claims John Walker Jr. owes in back taxes on income he earned from spying: $193,873
8/07Amount the political action committee of 2008 hopeful Fred Thompson has given to Republican causes since 2003: $83,650
Amount the PAC has paid since then in consulting fees to Thompson’s son: $196,260
11/05Number of erotic Harry Potter fan-fiction stories posted on a website run by an Illinois woman: 1,750
Average number of hits the site receives each day: 198,000
Portion of those addicts who are under 21: 2/3
4/93Amount NASA spent to develop the sanitary-napkin disposal unit in the space shuttle Endeavour: $200,000
8/96Copies of Muammar Qaddafi’s first short-story collection sold in Egypt since its publication last March: 200,000
8/00Gallons of bourbon that flowed into the Kentucky River last May during a fire at a Wild Turkey warehouse: 200,000
8/00Bounty placed on the head of any U.S. DEA agent last January by Mexico’s Juárez drug cartel: $200,000
10/00Amount a Chicago suburb’s city council offered a Muslim group last June to abandon its plans for a mosque there: $200,000
3/01Annual number of U.S. elementary school students who play The Stock Market Game, a 10-week trading simulation: 200,000
Additional amount they may borrow on margin: $100,000
2/05Price a D.C. hotel charges for its ”Presidential Privilege 2005” inauguration package, which includes a mink coat: $200,500
9/03Amount New Zealand’s Fire Service spent this year on a TV campaign against cooking while drunk: $201,300
10/05Average estimated salary, in today’s dollars, of the dads on the ten top-rated TV shows of the 1950s: $77,000
Average for the dads on today’s ten top-rated shows: $207,000
11/85Price of a fully equipped “terrorist-proof” Mercedes 500 at Washington’s Counter Spy Shop: $208,000
6/01Average number of food-poisoning incidents in the United States each day: 208,000