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
11/07Number of customers who have flown the Vatican’s new “pilgrim airline” to holy sites in Europe: 890
Size, in ounces, of the bottle of holy water provided to each customer on its inaugural flight in August: 3.4
1/09Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001: 196
Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890
11/92Price of a seven-day “all-nude” cruise to the Caribbean this winter, from Bare Necessities of Austin, Texas: $896
12/01Internal code number the British census has assigned to citizens who cited their religion as “Jedi Knight”: 896
Percentage change, since 1945, in the amount of insecticide used on U.S. crops: +900
10/93Price paid at auction in August for a set of unwashed sheets slept on by President Clinton last February: $900
2/97Hours of training required to become a licensed hair braider in New York City: 900
Hours of training required to become a New York City emergency medical technician: 117
3/97Number of recruitment letters a USC basketball coach sent Avondre Jones before he was signed: 900
5/98Percentage change since 1984 in the average price paid in the U.S. for a month’s worth of human eggs: +900
5/03Per capita GDP of the Republic of Congo: $900
1/07Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. Air Force security clearances revoked due to personal debt: +900
7/89Number of stories about George Bush that aired on the evening network news during his first 100 days in office: 336
Number of stories about Jimmy Carter that aired during his first 100 days in office: 906
7/86Members of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence: 907
11/87Number of public officials charged with corruption by the federal government in 1986: 916
7/06Number of books that Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968, according to a comprehensive list on his website: 948
9/02Number of appearances made by corporate representatives on U.S. network nightly newscasts last year: 955
Number of appearances made by labor representatives: 31
3/89Price of equipping a car with a pair of onion-gas spray guns, from Labock Industries in Tel Aviv: $960
12/03Amount by which the number of U.S. deaths in 2000 from lack of medical insurance exceeded those from AIDS: 967
9/85Cost of a week’s tuition for two parents at Philadelphia’s Better Baby Institute: $980
11/98Number of “I Slept with Kenneth Starr” bumper stickers sold by a Little Rock gift shop since last April: 990
4/92Average combined SAT score for children in families whose annual income is more than $70,000: 997
2/87Miles of abandoned railroad tracks that have been converted to jogging trails: 1,000
8/88Amount a co-chairman of the Bush campaign’s finance committee contributed to the Dukakis campaign: $1,000
7/89Estimated number of maternity uniforms the New York City Police Department has issued its officers since 1982: 1,000
12/89Number of pets blessed at the Feast of St. Francis at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine this fall: 1,000
1/90Amount of dehydrated, drug-free urine sold by Byrd Laboratories of Austin, Texas, since 1986, in reconstituted gallons: 1,000
5/90Amount of trash on display at the Trash Museum in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, in pounds: 1,000
6/90Total amount a Brazilian can withdraw from a savings account this year under President Collor’s austerity plan: $1,000
6/90Number of trees Harper & Row will plant to replace those used to publish 2 Minutes a Day for a Greener Planet: 1,000
4/91Number of participants in the All-India Conference of Eunuchs, held in Ghonsla last December: 1,000
7/91Number of Americans who have filed claims for the $1.5 billion in Iraqi assets frozen since last August: 1,000
9/92Copies of a Serbo-Croatian translation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America that have been sold since 1990: 1,000
5/94Amount by which a California public-school teacher’s average annual salary exceeds that of a state prison guard: $1,000
12/95Number of French job-seekers whose resumes were printed on wine bottles by local vintners last spring: 1,000
1/96Estimated change since 1985 in the number of Alcoholics Anonymous groups in Poland: +1,000
5/97Number of bulletproof Bibles manufactured last year by California’s Innovative Marketing Alliance: 1,000
8/97Number of actors who auditioned last winter to be the new Captain Kangaroo: 1,000
7/98Price of Vermont’s ten-day International Summer Institute for Youth in Holocaust Studies camp: $1,000
2/99Average number of tourists who visit the South African township of Soweto each day: 1,000
2/99Number of products licensed last year by the New York entrepreneur who trademarked the sequence 01-01-00: 1,000
5/99Head of cattle that Hyundai’s founder brought from South Korea last fall on a visit to North Korea’s Kim Jong Il: 1,000
1/00Number of the world’s 6,000 living languages that are indigenous to Papua New Guinea: 1,000
1/00Number of Chinese engineers who accompanied the Mongol Khan Hulägu on his siege of Baghdad in 1257: 1,000
9/01Estimated number of sign-language signs in the vocabulary of Koko, a San Francisco gorilla: 1,000
8/02Estimated number of survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attacks in Japan now living in the United States: 1,000
12/02Minimum percentage change since last year in Afghanistan’s opium production: +1,000
4/03Pounds of grits and other grains to be donated to fill this year’s food-budget gap at the South Carolina governor’s mansion: 1,000
5/03Number of new Indonesian islands discovered by satellite analysis in February: 1,000
6/03Estimated number of Ding Dongs manufactured per minute at St. Louis’s Interstate Brands factory: 1,000
11/04Price charged on Amazon.com this year for Lynne Cheney’s out-of-print lesbian historical novel, Sisters: $1,000
3/05Ratio of the number of computer viruses targeting Microsoft Windows‒based computers to those that target Macs: 1,000:1
10/08Estimated number of U.S. lives saved per month by $4 gasoline, through reduced driving nationwide: 1,000
8/06Price, from a Colombian manufacturer, for a custom-made bulletproof sports coat: $1,020
2/99Number of survivors of Spanish-American War soldiers who received Veterans Department benefits last year: 1,028
2/94Price paid at auction last December for an unused urine bag carried on the Soyuz 22 Soviet space flight: $1,035
1/00Number of years after Jews settled in China that they were first allowed to live in Russian territory: 1,045
1/90Number of the 1,077 toxic-waste sites the EPA Superfund targeted for cleanup in 1981 that remain hazardous: 1,047
11/97Number of people that Pope John Paul II has beatified or canonized since 1978: 1,049
8/08Number of circumcisions that Kotabaru, Indonesia, paid for this year to celebrate the city’s anniversary: 1,050
7/95Number of suburban murder-for-hire cases filed with U.S. law enforcement agencies since 1988: 1,053
1/00Estimated number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, according to the American Institute of Physics: 1064
1/09Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
4/02Number of people charged between 1988 and 1992 in connection with the U.S. savings and loan collapse: 1,098
Ratio of the average S&L jail term awarded in those years to the average term for a federal burglary conviction: 2:3
Number introduced so far this year: 800
Number today: 15
8/05Amount that the Catholic Church spent in Britain this summer advertising for new priests on bar coasters: $1,100
1/02Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan: 1,101
5/98Length, in pages, of the Senate’s new report on the financing of the 1996 Democratic campaigns: 1,112
5/04Number of suspensions a Dallas-area high school handed out last fall for dress-code violations: 1,116
11/92Number of months before Hurricane Andrew struck south Florida that the RTC canceled its property insurance there: 4
Disaster relief President Bush pledged to Florida in September, per registered voter there: $1,125
4/00Percentage change in foreign direct investment in Vietnam between 1991 and 1996: +1,142
Percentage change since then: -43