9/84Butlers in Britain before World War II: 30,000
12/85Number of people who attended the International Conference on Spelling Reform held in England last summer: 17
2/85Percentage decrease in articles by British scientists in the 2,000 leading scientific journals, from 1973 to 1980: 10
Number in which U.S., British, or Canadian corporations own a controlling interest: 4
7/85Percentage of all money spent by American tourists in Britain in 1984 that was spent at Harrods: 6
8/85Value of the art and antiques exported from England in 1984: £615,000,000
1/86Percentage change in Britain’s manufacturing output since 1979: -6
4/86Value of British government assets Prime Minister Thatcher has sold since 1979: $20,000,000,000
6/86Rank of France, Italy, and England among destinations of congressional fact-finding trips: 1,2,3
9/86Days spent on strike by British workers in 1979: 29,474,000
1/87Number of times since 1979 Britain has “refined” its method of counting the unemployed: 19
Number of those refinements that resulted in a lower unemployment rate: 18
4/87Percentage of Hispanics in California who voted to make English the state’s official language: 44
5/87Amount Britain’s Labour Party proposes to pay students 16 and older to stay in school (per week): £27
6/87Odds offered by London bookies that a space creature, dead or alive, will land on Earth in the next year: 250 to 1
That Pat Robertson will win the Republican presidential nomination: 50 to 1
12/88Average number of years of marriage before an unfaithful British husband has his first affair: 8
2/88Dollars bought by Japan, Germany, and Britain in 1987 to support the currency’s value: 78,000,000,000
2/88Tons of earth that will be moved to build the tunnel under the English Channel: 7,500,000
6/88Percentage of British citizens who say that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom: 27
Percentage of political deaths in Northern Ireland, since 1969, that have been caused by the IRA: 40
8/88Number of the 23 daily newspapers in New York City that are published in English: 10
9/88Rank of Princess Di, Bruce Willis, and Michael J. Fox in number of magazine cover appearances last year: 1,2,3
1/89Estimated amount the British government spent worldwide to stop publication of Spycatcher: $6,000,000
7/89Length of the entry for the word “set” in the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, in pages: 60
2/90Percentage decrease, since 1979, in the number of professorships in American studies in Britain: 50
5/90Number of words in the English language that exist because of typographical errors or misreadings: 381
9/90Number of snails that animal-rights activists liberated from a snail farm in England last March: 153,000
1/91Estimated amount Princess Diana has spent on underwear since marrying Prince Charles: $26,460
12/91Value Lloyd’s of London has placed on a Viking turd owned by England’s Archaeological Resource Centre: $34,000
4/91Amount the British Boy Scouts have earned since 1988 by selling corporate advertising space on merit badges: $500,000
4/92Percentage of Japanese graduating high-school seniors who have taken at least six years of English-language classes: 100
11/93Percentage of economics majors at Ivy League colleges who say at least one of their parents has smoked marijuana: 23
7/93London bookmakers’ odds that the British monarchy will be abolished by the year 2000: 1 to 5
2/94Issues of Mad the magazine will give Prince Charles this year for winning its Alfred E. Neuman Look-Alike Contest: 12
3/94Factor by which the murder rate in Washington, D.C., last year exceeded that of Northern Ireland: 15
7/94Number of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves who escaped to join the British during the American Revolution: 22
11/95Estimated number of years that Ireland’s Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams received British public assistance: 10
2/95Percentage of Britons who say John Major’s Conservative Party seems “very sleazy and disreputable”: 73
2/95Ratio of the number of Britons who blame Prince Charles for his failed marriage to the number blaming Diana: 5:1
3/95Rank for which the words “town” and “priest” are tied, among the oldest English words cited in the Oxford English Dictionary: 1
3/95Number of years McDonald’s has been suing 2 unemployed Britons for distributing pamphlets calling its food “unhealthy”: 4
5/95Membership of the British Old Bags Club, a group of middle-aged divorcees: 450
5/95Number of Britons seeking medical care each year for injuries sustained while attempting to open cans of corned beef: 8,000
9/95Number of people injured during a cheese-rolling competition held last May in Cheltenham, England: 18
1/96Ratio of the amount Britons spent on lottery tickets last year to the amount they spent on tea: 4:1
Number of these disposed of at the request of the couples who produced them: 2,500
11/96Years before becoming the prime minister of Britain that John Major was “on the dole”: 28
11/96Year in which America last had as bad a relationship with Britain as it does today, according to James Baker: 1773
11/96Year in which the British sacked the city of Washington and burned the White House: 1814
12/96Amount that Wanted, a British TV game show, pays contestants for each day they elude a team of former KGB agents: $1,560
12/96Amount a London insurance firm will pay clients who can prove they were impregnated by God: $1,500,000
3/96Percentage of British Members of Parliament who believe that stress is reducing their interest in sex: 38
5/96Estimated number of robins that mistake electric light for dawn each night in Great Britain: 10,000
7/96Days in jail to which a British retiree was sentenced in February for excessive pigeon feeding: 56
8/96Percentage change, since last February, in sales of vegetarian cookbooks at Britain’s largest book chain: +300
9/96Number of great crested newts a British housing developer plans to “responsibly relocate” by the end of the year: 19,000
10/97Months two British neighbors spent hooting at owls at night before realizing they were hooting at each other: 12
11/97Tons of flowers and other tokens deposited outside Princess Diana’s palace in the week following her death: 11,200
3/97Percentage of British women who find Prime Minister John Major “attractive”: 2
Percentage who find Labour Leader Tony Blair “smarmy”: 24
7/97Number of years British Prime Minister Tony Blair served as lead singer of the rock band Ugly Rumours: 2
1/98Number of Fiat owners Paris police were ordered last fall to question in connection with Princess Diana’s death: 40,000
10/98Rank of meeting the Spice Girls among the “greatest moments of my life” according to Prince Charles: 1
12/98Year in which Christmas celebrations, plum pudding, and mince pie were outlawed in England: 1647
5/98Number of years Britain’s Prince Charles has farmed organically: 12
8/98Amount British Nuclear Fuels paid the British Scouts last year to add its logo to their scientist badge: $49,776
9/98Price of a gold-plated crucifix pendant with a built-in alarm, from Britain’s Avon Silversmiths: $414
1/99Percentage of the fall 1998 issue of Britain’s The Ecologist magazine devoted to an investigation of Monsanto: 95
Percentage of the issue’s entire press run immediately pulped by the printer, for fear of breaking British libel laws: 100
10/99Amount a clerical error has cost the British government in excess payments to the Queen since 1991: $31,500,000
10/99Legal fees paid by Princess Diana’s memorial fund this year to stop the Franklin Mint’s sale of Diana souvenirs: $48,000
11/99Portion of the words in Webster’s New World Dictionary memorized by one non-English-speaking Thai Scrabble champ: 2/3
4/99Estimated attendance at a rally for debt relief for poor countries held outside Britain’s 1998 G-7 summit: 60,000
5/99Chance that a day since December 28 has passed without U.S. or British forces bombing Iraq: 1 in 2
8/99Number of days last year that a British art museum exhibited a mound of dung from Dolly, the world’s first cloned sheep: 51
9/99Maximum fine to which a British grocer will be subject next year for using anything other than the metric system: £5,000
9/99Hours of helicopter lessons required for the new “Super Butler” degree at London’s most expensive butler school: 60
9/99Pages of the British royal family’s medical records found in a folder lying by the side of a Scottish road last March: 70
Percentage change in the amount of British cotton products India imported during the same period: +1,500
1/00Estimated number of pairs of gloves owned by Elizabeth I: 2,000
10/00Percentage change since last year in the number of deaths in Britain due to the human form of mad cow disease: +175
11/00Ratio of the average cost of a gallon of gas in Britain last September to that of a gallon of Starbucks coffee: 1:4
3/00Percentage change since 1997 in the number of Britons waiting to get on the National Health Service’s waiting list: +100
3/00Percentage of the residents of Northern Ireland who report being happy: 92
6/00Years after the Great Potato Famine began that Britain loosened its land-ownership requirements for Irish voters: 5
6/00Price of a gallon of gas in the United Kingdom last April: $4.84
Price a year earlier: $3.87
8/00Chance that a contestant who’s appeared on ABC ‘s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has won a million dollars: 1 in 67
9/00Amount contributed for a University of Nebraska English chair last June by the founder of CliffsNotes: $250,000
1/01Ratio of Britain’s per capita health-care spending to that of Cuba: 11:1
12/01Internal code number the British census has assigned to citizens who cited their religion as “Jedi Knight”: 896
3/01Price of a designer skirt made of hamster pelts, introduced in Britain last year: $2,200
3/01Average number of cows destroyed each day in Britain last year in an effort to eliminate mad cow disease: 2,274
Number of European countries in which cases of the disease mad cow disease have been documented: 13
4/01Years before a British official was killed in Athens last winter that a CIA bureau chief was killed there with the same gun: 25
4/01Rank of Oasis singer Liam Gallagher among public figures most reviled by Britons: 3
Rank of Slobodan Milosevic and Adolf Hitler, respectively: 2,1
6/01Estimated number of people who tried to cross illegally into England via the Channel Tunnel each night last year: 125
11/02Rank of the United States and Britain among nations whose residents are most likely to be obese: 1,2
12/02Organizers’ estimated attendance at this fall’s largest peace rallies in London and New York, respectively: 400,000, 25,000
Estimated attendance according to police in each city: 150,000, 12,000
Number of estimates cited in each rally’s coverage in the London Times and the New York Times, respectively: 2, 0
5/02Number of Britain’s Anglican clergy to whom their union is offering martial-arts training this year: 1,500
5/02Estimated percentage by which British arms sales to African countries next year will exceed such sales in 1999: 400
7/02Percentage of male fish in two English rivers that scientists say have been “effectively feminised” by estrogen in the water: 100
8/02Years before the death of Britain’s Queen Mother in March that the Times of London first wrote her obituary: 64
9/02Rank of the United States and Britain among countries viewed most favorably by Muslims aged 15 to 25: 1,2
2/03Chance that a Briton polled online believes that the United States is a bigger threat to world peace than is Iraq: 1 in 3
2/03Percentage of Jamaicans who say they would be “better off today” had Jamaica remained a British colony: 53
3/03British price-fixing fine levied last November on Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly: $8,000,000
5/03Fine that Britain’s education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants: $3,900
5/03Chance that a British military reservist called up since January has asked to be excused from duty: 1 in 8
6/03Percentage change in central London’s average rush-hour car speed since a £5 toll was imposed there in February: +111
7/03Percentage by which a British flag maker’s sales of U.S. flags in March exceeded those a year earlier: 25
7/03Number of terrorism indictments brought since September 2001 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey: 62
Number of them brought against Middle Eastern students for paying others to take their English proficiency tests: 60
9/03Percentage of the first month of British sales of the new Harry Potter book accounted for by “adult” editions: 11
1/04Rank of rhinoplasty and liposuction among the most common plastic surgeries performed on men in the U.S.: 1,2
Rank of rhinoplasty and penile enlargement among those most commonly performed on men in the U.K.: 2, 1
10/04Estimated price a British cable company will charge for a kit to track “ evidence of the paranormal” via the Internet: £150
11/04Percentage of Britons over the age of 50 who have hurt themselves attempting to open product packaging: 71
12/04Estimated number of Britons sent government warnings last fall of their increased chance of having mad cow disease: 6,000
2/04Price a British company charges for its Purring Kitty software, which converts a mobile phone into a “discreet massager”: $2.65
3/04Ratio of the number of privately contracted military workers in Iraq to the number of British troops there: 5:4
3/04Estimated percentage of British food-poisoning infections caused by bottled water: 12
5/04Months into the war that Britain confirmed that all its troops were outfitted with desert clothing: 9
6/04Chance that a British infantry recruit’s reading and writing skills are no better than the average 11-year-old’s: 1 in 2
6/04Chances that God exists, according to a British physicist working as a risk analyst in Ohio: 2 in 3
7/04Years after symptoms of his deranging genetic disorder appeared that King George III held the throne in England: 56
7/04Average inches by which a British man’s height fell short of an American man’s in the eighteenth century: 3.1
7/04Number of fried chocolate sandwiches served at a British hotel chain in April after their debut: 1,256
8/04Rank of Labour among British political parties that won the most votes in local elections in June: 3
8/04Percentage of Britons who cannot name the city that provides the setting for the musical Chicago: 65
1/05Percentage by which British university graduates are less likely than non-graduates to phone their mothers regularly: 20
Percentage by which they are less likely to make regular visits: 50
Percentage who hear an “upper-class” or “BBC” voice: 30
12/05Portion of British food aid for Katrina evacuees that still sits unused in an Arkansas warehouse: 7/10
12/05Percentage of British adults who are members of any of their country’s three major political parties: 1.2
2/05Ratio in December of the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to the number from Britain, the second-largest contributor: 16:1
2/05Number of Britons who have signed a declaration stating they will disobey any ban on fox hunting: 50,000
Number of foxes eaten by a British performance artist to protest the protests of the proposed ban: 2
3/05Percentage of Britons who say their neighborhood would disapprove if more Iraqi immigrants moved in: 64
Percentage who say this about black immigrants from Africa: 43
4/05Percentage of Social Security contributions that go toward administrative costs: 0.6
4/05Number of the 701 arrests under Britain’s Terrorism Act since 2001 that have led to conviction: 17
4/05Estimated number of visitors each week to the grave of Harry Potter, a Briton buried in Israel in 1939: 45
7/05Average percentage of the U.K. population that Britons believe to be immigrants: 21
Actual percentage: 8
7/05Total value of bets taken by a U.K. bookmaker this spring on the identity of the new pope: £50,000
8/05Amount that the Catholic Church spent in Britain this summer advertising for new priests on bar coasters: $1,100
9/05Percentage of Asian-Americans whose primary source of news is not in English: 25
11/06Amount that U.S. embassy staff in London owe in unpaid traffic charges: $1,600,000
3/06Number of weapons that have been turned into tools for African farmers by a British nonprofit since 2001: 2,200
Number of farm implements that a rocket launcher yields: 5
3/06Number of books published in Britain since 2004 that have “shit,” “shite,” or “ crap ” in their titles: 23
5/06Chance that a British youth reports having been bullied via text message: 1 in 7
7/06Number of “peace walls” that divided Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast at the time of the 1994 ceasefire: 30
Number today: 41
7/06Percentage by which Britain’s The Independent outsold its daily average on May 16, the day U2’s Bono was guest editor: 30
2/07Amount that Britons paid to “Nigerian-style” email and letter scams last year: $661,500,000
4/07Number of the world’s top ten English-language Scrabble players who are not native English speakers: 3
5/07Rank of money and God, respectively, among “the very best thing[s] in the world” to British children under 10: 1, 10
5/07Rank of Britain among twenty-one rich countries the U.N. ranked this year for “child well-being”: 21
Rank of the United States: 20
5/07Number of British men last year who had cosmetic surgery to reduce the size of their breasts: 177
5/07Amount the British military spent in 2002 researching whether psychics could find terrorist hideouts: $35,000
Chance that a psychic it tested could, blindfolded, identify some portion of the contents of a sealed envelope: 1 in 3
6/07Percentage of British Muslims aged 16 to 24 who advocate death for Muslims who convert to another faith: 36
Percentage who say they “admire organizations like al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West”: 13
8/07Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they “worry about global warming”: 34