11/84Number of covers Paris-Match has devoted this year to President François Mitterrand: 2
For workers in the Soviet Union: 15
6/86Rank of France, Italy, and England among destinations of congressional fact-finding trips: 1,2,3
7/86Rank of Ronald Reagan, among all foreign leaders, in popularity among the French: 1
3/87Percentage of French men who say they would like to see Princess Stephanie pose nude in a magazine: 28
6/89Daily wage a French company paid U.S. volunteers in 1988 to pick sprayed crops to test pesticides’ effects: $100
11/90Amount a cousin of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd lost at casinos on the French Riviera in August: $21,640,000
2/90Number of one-year-olds on the waiting list for the French for Tots program in New York City: 152
9/90Number of people who can be tested for radiation exposure in one day on France’s “hospital train”: 5,000
8/92Percentage of French women who do not view being asked to undress for a job interview as sexual harassment: 20
7/93Percentage of the French who say that the beheading of King Louis XVI in 1793 was “unjust,” “inexcusable,” or “revolting”: 42
6/94Ratio of the size of the staff at the U.S. embassy in Paris to the size of the staff at the U.S. embassy in Beijing: 3:1
6/94Percentage of 15- to 24-year-old French workers who are unemployed: 24
6/94Percentage of all songs played on French radio after 1995 that must be in French, according to a new law passed this year: 40
12/95Number of French job-seekers whose resumes were printed on wine bottles by local vintners last spring: 1,000
7/95Number of years Jeanne Louise Calment, France’s oldest woman, smoked cigarettes before she quit in 1993: 98
9/96Price a Paris boutique charges for an ounce of Yin Shen White Tea, “hand-picked by Chinese virgins”: $90
1/98Number of Fiat owners Paris police were ordered last fall to question in connection with Princess Diana’s death: 40,000
1/98Percentage of French gas stations that ran dry after a five-day roadblock last fall by striking French truckers: 40
2/98Amount by which the number of asylum seekers rejected by France since 1995 exceeds the number that applied: 4,718
9/98Days a Denver school principal was put on leave last May for allowing students a sip of wine on a trip to Paris: 13
7/99Percentage of the people living in France during the French Revolution who spoke French: 50
9/99Amount that Florida governor Jeb Bush’s wife spent on a 5-day shopping trip to Paris last June: $19,000
Amount she declared to U.S. Customs: $500
1/00Year in which Marie Antoinette convinced France’s King Louis XVI to declare that all handkerchiefs be square: 1785
1/00Percentage of the French government’s 1788 expenditures that went to support the court at Versailles: 6
Percentage that went to finance war debt resulting from France’s support of the colonies in the American Revolution: 50
1/00Percentage change in enrollment in U.S. college-level French and German courses since 1995: -4.5
12/00Number of the one hundred countries with the world’s highest birthrates that have approved the abortion pill RU-486: 0
3/00Ratio of the combined value of AOL and Time Warner last January 11 to the annual budget of France: 4:3
3/00Number of Parisians who break bones or are hospitalized each year after slipping on dog feces: 650
5/00Factor by which a shipment of Ukrainian mushrooms seized by French customs last year exceeded legal radiation limits: 12
9/00Number of years of planning and construction devoted to France’s Maginot Line fortifications in World War II: 15
9/00Rank of France, Italy, and Germany, respectively, among countries with the best overall health-care systems: 1,2,25
10/01Minimum number of garden gnomes relocated to the forest since 1996 by France’s Garden Gnome Liberation Front: 6,000
11/01Year in which the French recognized the murder of two thirds of Turkey’s Armenians during World War I as “genocide”: 2001
6/01Ratio of the weight of a croissant at an Au Bon Pain to that of a typical croissant at a Parisian bakery: 2:1
9/02Minimum number of Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets that the company plans to open in France by 2006: 100
1/03Percentage of the $1.1 trillion in Iraqi oil contracts that are held by French or Russian companies: 69
1/04Inches by which the Eiffel Tower shrinks in winter: 6
3/04Cost of testing each slaughtered U.S. cow for mad cow disease per pound of beef produced: 5¢
Ratio of the number of cows France tests each week to the number the United States has tested in the last decade: 7:6
5/04Estimated percentage of French schoolgirls who wore an Islamic head scarf to school last fall: 0.02
7/04Last year in which French frogs were served at the Brotherhood of the Frog Thigh Tasters’ annual fair in Vittel, France: 1977
4/05Minimum number of octopuses catapulted in protest at a French McDonald’s last year: 10
11/06Average number of books written by each French president since World War II: 8
Average by U.S. presidents: 4
Number written by Jimmy Carter: 20
6/06Percentage of Chinese who say the free market is “the best system on which to base the future of the world”: 74
6/07Number of UFO sightings in France since 1950, according to newly released French government documents: 1,650