10/84Average life span of a 1960s television sitcom (in years): 2.26
12/84Percentage of American teachers who say that if they could start over, they would not teach: 24
In the Soviet Union: 4
In Switzerland: 20
11/85U.S. spending on health care in 1960, expressed as a percentage of the gross national product: 5.3
11/85Percentage of the 90,000 Latin Americans who have “disappeared” since 1963 who were Guatemalan: 39
12/85Percentage of doctors in 1960 who said patients should be told the truth about their cancer: 18
Percentage who say that today: 70
7/85Percentage of Supreme Court cases in which civil liberties claims were made and upheld in 1963: 86
Percentage today: 43
Today: 2 to 1
9/86Percentage of practicing physicians who belonged to the American Medical Association in 1962: 74
1/87Number of entries under “journalistic ethics” in the 1961 Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature: 0
10/87Number of states that have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968: 23
Number that have voted Democratic in every election since 1968: 0
5/87Percentage increase in the number of traps set by Maine lobstermen since 1965: 185
Percentage increase in the number of lobsters caught by Maine lobstermen since 1965: 13
5/87Percentage change, since 1965, in the number of Americans who have gone bird watching in the last year: +100
8/87Number of Palestinian homes in the West Bank that have been demolished or sealed by Israel since 1967: 1,500
8/87Number of mosques in the Gaza Strip in 1967: 71
4/88Percentage increase, since 1967, in the number of mosques in the Gaza Strip: 158
6/88Number of presidential elections since 1964 in which the Democratic candidate won a majority of the white vote: 0
3/91Ratio of the number of profanities uttered by actors to the number uttered by actresses in films released in the 1960s: 10:1
4/91Percentage of TV evening-news coverage of the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1970 that depicted casualties in battle: 3
Chances today: 1 in 4
11/93Ratio of the number of jobs created to jobs lost in U.S. communities where military bases have closed since 1961: 5:3
5/93Number of cardigan sweaters worn by Mr. Rogers on his TV show since 1968: 24
12/94Chances that an American believes the federal government should take “primary responsibility” for eliminating poverty: 1 in 3
Chances that an American in 1964 believed the government had a responsibility to eliminate poverty: 3 in 4
9/94Price of a 4 1/2-pound-steak dinner at Amarillo’s Big Texan Steak Ranch, if consumed within an hour: $0
12/95Ratio of Republican to Democratic presidential vetoes overridden by Congress since 1960: 14:1
4/95Rank of New York among states with the highest incidence of wrongful execution between 1900 and 1965: 1
1/96Chances that a black American adult attended Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963: 1 in 60
5/96Number of Vietnamese in Vietnam in 1969, per US. soldier stationed there: 77
11/97Price a Dallas firm charges for a 60-minute tour retracing JFK’s 1963 motorcade route in a period convertible: $25
12/97Percentage change since 1966 in the number of U.S. college freshmen who say it is important to follow politics: -50
4/97Net change in the capital-gains tax rate under Republican presidents since 1960, in percentage points: +7.5
Net change in the rate under Democratic presidents: -4.5
1/98Ratio of TV viewers who watched a 1973 Elvis Presley concert to those who watched the 1969 moon landing: 3:1
10/98Estimated number of U.S. high school students enrolled in first-year Latin classes last year: 88,600
11/98Portion of the $19.98 price of a video of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination that goes to the Zapruder family: 1/5
Percentage by which Abraham Zapruder underreported his initial profits from the film to the Warren Commission in 1964: 50
11/98Estimated ratio of satellites in the path of the last Leonid meteor shower in 1966 to those in its path this November 17: 1:10
11/98Number of wild turkeys in New Hampshire in 1968: 0
Number there today: 10,000
4/98Percentage change since 1965 in the number of kosher delis in New York City: -88
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
2/99Ratio of reporters who covered John Glenn’s 1998 shuttle flight to those who covered his first space flight in 1962: 7:1
4/00Percentage change between 1965 and 1995 in the number of U.S. households that pay for housecleaning: +53
9/00Length, in pages, of Al Gore’s 1969 Harvard thesis on the impact of TV “on the conduct of the Presidency”: 105
1/01Percentage of the U.S. budget devoted to foreign developmental aid in 1962 and 2000, respectively: 3, 0.5
10/01Number of “weapons of mass destruction” allowed in space, according to a 1967 treaty ratified by the United States: 0
Number of abstentions to reaffirming the treaty last year besides those of the United States, Israel, and Micronesia: 0
10/01Ratio of acres of Colombia sprayed with defoliants last year to acres of Vietnam sprayed with Agent Orange in 1964: 3:2
11/01Members of Congress who voted against this fall’s resolution to authorize an armed response to September 11’s attack: 1
Members who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to authorize further U.S. attacks on Vietnam: 2
Estimated number of minutes after the cat was released on its first test run that it was killed by a taxi: 10
1/02Number of mock biological attacks with live bacteria carried out domestically by the U.S. Army between 1949 and 1969: 199
Year in which the Army released bacteria into New York City’s subway system: 1966
11/02Percentage change since 1965 in the number of hog and pig farms in the United States: -92
Percentage change since then in the number of hogs and pigs on U.S. farms: +18
7/02Military budget of Israel in 1967 expressed as a percentage of the budgets of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria combined: 58
9/02Number of weapons seized in a 1962 desegregation riot at a fraternity then headed by future senator Trent Lott: 24
11/03Age in years of a California bristlecone pine that is the oldest tree on earth: 4,733
Age in years of a Nevada bristlecone when the U.S. Forest Service let a graduate student cut it down in 1964: 4,950
12/03Days after a 1961 meeting with Khrushchev that President Kennedy leaked claims of U.S. nuclear-missile superiority: 29
3/03Percentage change since 1964 in the number of different marshmallow shapes to be found in Lucky Charms cereal: +100
5/03Percentage change since 1968 in the real value of the U.S. federal minimum wage: -37
11/04Days after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that Dick Cheney married, securing a draft deferment: 22
12/04Percentage of 30-year-old American men who were married, self-supporting fathers in 1960 and 2000, respectively: 65,31
12/04Number of levels of executive positions in the federal government in 1960 and this year, respectively: 17,58
Total number of federal executives in each of those years: 451, 2,592
3/04Average percentage change in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth per decade between 1960 and 1990: -3
4/04Median income of black U.S. families as a percentage of white families’ in 1968 and 2002, respectively: 60, 58
8/04Chance that an African national leader who left office between 1960 and 2003 did so because he lost an election: 1 in 10
9/04Secret access code to the computer controls of the U.S. nuclear-tipped missile arsenal between 1968 and 1976: 00000000
7/06Number of books that Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968, according to a comprehensive list on his website: 948
2/07Average annual percentage change, since 1965, in U.S. spending when one party controls the presidency and Congress: +3.4
Average when control is divided: +1.5