10/84Number of members of the International Flat Earth Research Society: 2,000
12/84Percentage of Americans who believe their presence at a sports event influences its outcome: 25
4/87Price of an hour of valet parking at the Beverly Hills post office: $1.50
Federal funds spent last year to promote celibacy among teenagers: $3,000,000
11/89Number of the 28 states requiring AIDS education in public schools that also require discussion of condom use: 3
Number of states requiring that abstinence be stressed: 18
4/89Price of a 10-ounce bottle of Mendocino Truffle Mineral Water: $4
7/89Ratio in 1988 of New York State residents who bought lottery tickets to those who voted: 3:2
12/90Price of a gold-plated refrigerator from the Mitsukoshi department store in Tokyo: $6,181
4/90Number of the 11 magazine articles about lottery winners published in 1989 that ran in Jet magazine: 11
4/90Number of times Noriega’s prisoner number was bet in the first Florida state lottery held after he was arrested: 12,139
2/93Number of minutes it took an Australian man to give away the $1 million he won in a lottery last year: 30
2/93Years after winning a $3 million state lottery that a Los Angeles man was arrested for receiving looted merchandise: 3
6/93Amount by which the price of a pair of J. Crew broken-in jeans exceeds the price of a pair of regular J. Crew jeans: $8
10/94Percentage of Americans who believe that the world will be “better off” in the year 2000: 26
10/94Number of “translators” commissioned last year by a Yale divinity student to convert the Bible into Klingon: 10
2/94Percentage of all U.S. paperback-book sales accounted for by romance novels: 47
4/94Amount the federal government spent on pickle research last year: $277,000
6/94Ratio of the amount President Clinton spent on polling last year to the amount spent by George Bush in 1989: 28:1
9/94Amount for which a Pennsylvania woman is suing the state’s lottery commission because she has never won: $1,500,000
3/95Amount for which a Mississippi man attempted to sue “the Bible” last year, citing it as “oppressive hearsay”: $45,000,000
8/95Ratio of the price of the Los Angeles Times in South Central L.A. to the price in Orange County: 2:1
1/96Ratio of the amount Britons spent on lottery tickets last year to the amount they spent on tea: 4:1
7/96Fine levied on a Swedish couple in March for naming a son Brfxxxcccxxmnnpcccclllmmnprxxvvclmnckssqlbb11116: $746
7/96Number of missiles designed for the Pentagon by Jack Ryan, a designer of the first Barbie Doll: 2
Number of months Ryan was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor: 9
8/96Number of espresso makers Sandy Hill Pittman took with her last March on her third attempt to climb Mount Everest: 1
1/97Percentage of Americans who are “more comfortable” with a First Lady who keeps the same hairstyle for an entire term: 17
3/97Amount the Library of Congress spent last year to create a braille edition of Playboy: $60,000
Chance that an American woman believes this: 1 in 9
5/98Number of consecutive hours that a Maryland man spent kissing a motorboat last winter in order to win it in a contest: 59
6/98Estimated number of calls made to Californian Al Nino since last year by people asking, “Why are you doing this?”: 100
Number of months one co-author spent married to the original Bozo the Clown: 18
11/99Ratio of the average annual amount a white American spends on lottery tickets to what a black American spends: 1:5
1/00Hours required to assemble a prefabricated nuclear-bomb shelter, according to a 1961 Life magazine cover story: 4
4/00Number of former welfare recipients New York City trained since last April to work as phone psychics: 15
5/00Chance that a college student expects to be a millionaire by the age of 40: 1 in 2
6/00Number of “marriage studies” majors learning “the art of getting and staying married ” last term at a Pennsylvania college: 8
12/01Number of mimes Guatemala’s transit department hired last April to administer driver “education” at busy intersections: 20
12/01Months after the millennium that Dublin plans to complete the erection of its 394-foot Millennium Spike: 20
4/01Chances that the taxes of a low-income working American family will not be reduced by the Bush tax plan: 3 in 5
4/01Percentage of U.S. high school sex-ed teachers who say that abstinence is the only birth-control method they cover: 23
5/02Number of Manhattan’s 123 Starbucks outlets that are within two blocks of another one: 68
7/02Chances an American believes the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorist attacks: 2 in 5
11/03Years it took the U.S. Geological Survey to conclude that Arctic refuge drilling would substantially reduce caribou: 12
11/03Days after announcing this conclusion last July that the Geological Survey issued a memo discounting it: 7
12/03Spending Winston Churchill approved in 1943 to research making an aircraft carrier out of ice and wood pulp: $136,000
12/03Percentage of Baghdad’s citizens asked to participate in a Gallup poll last September who agreed to do so: 98
Average percentage of Americans asked to participate in Gallup polls who do: 40
2/03Percentage of Americans surveyed in October who chose the word “hopeful” to describe their feelings about the economy: 37
Percentage who chose “angry,” “worried,” or “confused”: 59
6/03Amount the U.S. Air Force spent on a “nostalgic juke box” for a base in Saudi Arabia in the last two years: $14,835
Amount it spent on cowboy hats: $4,896
7/03Number of American states that have revoked helmet requirements for adult motorcycle riders since 1975: 30
12/04Price of the bottle of champagne a New York club requires patrons to buy in order to use a diamond-encrusted table: $5,000
2/04Number of times a Hummer H2 could be driven around the world on the excess calories Americans consume each year: 244
11/05Amount Americans spent last year on “fantasy football”: $2,079,000,000
2/05Rank of the United States among nations that consume the most cigarettes per capita: 16
2/05Price a D.C. hotel charges for its ”Presidential Privilege 2005” inauguration package, which includes a mink coat: $200,500
6/05Ratio of women to men killed in last December’s tsunami, in a survey of eight Indonesian villages: 3:1
10/06Minimum amount of USDA farm subsidies since 2000 that have been paid out to people who do not farm: $1,300,000,000
12/06Minimum number of PlayStation 3s whose spare processing power will be used next year for biological research: 10,000
Factor by which the interconnected game systems will be faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer: 5
3/06Number of the 193 “ laughing episodes ” during Supreme Court arguments last term that were caused by Antonin Scalia: 77
Number caused by Clarence Thomas: 0
9/06Months that an Idaho man has checked out his library’s copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, to prevent others from seeing it: 7
Number of additional copies that the library has received unsolicited since this was first reported: 7
11/07Number of sixty Iraqi detainees surveyed who said they had attacked U.S. forces for political reasons: 12
2/07Average number of times an adult worldwide has sex each year, according to self-reporting in polls: 103
3/07Minimum number of hits received each month by the GM website Hummerkids.com: 40,000
10/08Number of states that have refused to accept federal grants for pro-abstinence sex education this year: 24
Date on which the group was first posted to: 3/7/2008
3/09Number of exotic marine animals that a new Dubai hotel keeps in its 3 million gallons of decorative tanks: 65,000