7/84Earnings of the average U.S. female worker, expressed as a percentage of the average male’s, in 1981: 59.9
Today: 1/4
By Protestants: 5
12/86Percentage of Americans in 1957 who said that an unmarried woman was “sick,” “neurotic,” or “immoral”: 80
12/86Mental disorders recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952: 110
4/86Percentage of Republicans in 1955 who were white Southerners: 10
Percentage who cannot name the region of the country William Faulkner wrote about: 67
5/88Number of years, since 1953, in which a president lost more congressional votes than he won: 1
6/89Average ratio of students to teachers in an American public school classroom in 1955: 27:1
Average ratio today: 18:1
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
9/89Percentage increase, since 1959, in the number of Supreme Court cases that involve the separation of powers: 224
12/91Ratio of the Barbie dolls sold in the United States since 1959 to the number of Americans born since then: 5:1
8/92Rank of Bill Clinton, among all Democratic presidential nominees since 1956, in percentage of primary votes won: 1
10/94Gallons of hamburger grease sold by McDonald’s since 1955: 281,250,000
3/95Percentage change since 1950 in the average life span of an American chicken raised for slaughter: -67
8/95Estimated change in annual federal revenues if corporations were taxed at 1953 rates: +$53,000,000,000
3/96Number of countries to which the U.S. has officially deployed combat ground troops since 1950: 21
Portion of these from which U.S. troops have been withdrawn: 1/2
4/96Rank of Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster against civil rights legislation among the longest filibusters in U.S. history: 1
4/96Price paid at auction last June for the two fiberglass tablets used in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments: $81,700
12/99Total number of nuclear weapons worldwide when the first nuclear test ban negotiations began in 1958: 10,713
Percentage by which the number had changed by the time the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963: +220
Percentage by which it has changed since then: -7
1/00Number of New York City children issued Civil Defense dog tags by 1952 to identify them after a nuclear attack: 2,500,000
10/00Tons of SF5CF3, a synthetic greenhouse gas, discovered this year to have accumulated in the atmosphere since 1950: 4,000
12/00Ratio of the number of bushels of wheat one barrel of oil could buy in 1950 to the number it could buy today: 1:10
2/00Number of Africans used to test a U.S. polio vaccine made with primate kidney cells in the 1950s: 1,000,000
Number of the 46 Africans found to be HIV-positive before 1981 who lived within 90 miles of the vaccine trials: 45
3/00Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12
4/01Number of accidents involving U.S. nuclear arms between 1950 and 1980, according to the Pentagon: 32
4/02Number of Argentina’s 17 presidents since 1958 who have completed a full term: 1
8/02Number of countries in which at least one U.S. soldier was stationed last year and in 1950, respectively: 148, 95
8/02Number of U.S. residents in 1954 that the FBI had slated for roundup in the event of a national emergency: 26,000
3/03Minimum number of local activists the Denver police department has gathered information on since the 1950s: 3,200
Amount the department spent in 2000 to put these names in an internal database: $45,800
6/04Number of countries given weapons-grade uranium since the 1950s under the U.S. Atoms for Peace program: 51
7/04Average number of “smoking incidents” per hour in major U.S. films in 1950 and 2002, respectively: 10.7, 10.9
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
Percentage last year: 19
Ratings for Harry Truman in 1952 and Richard Nixon in 1974, respectively, the only presidents ever to climb as high: 67, 66
4/07Percentage of American adults held in either prisons or mental institutions in 1953 and today, respectively: 0.67, 0.68
Percentage of these adults in 1953 who were in mental institutions: 75
6/07Number of UFO sightings in France since 1950, according to newly released French government documents: 1,650
1/09Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1