Harper’s Index

Estimated chances that a U.S. corporate merger will result in short- and long-term shareholder losses: 2 in 3

Chances that a dollar spent on lobbying by a major oil company in 1997 came from Exxon or Mobil: 1 in 4

Percentage by which the breakup of Standard Oil increased the size of John D. Rockefeller's personal wealth: 300

Percentage of his wealth that Bill Gates has pledged to donate this year for children's vaccines in poor countries: 0.0016

Amount that Nike CEO Philip Knight was paid last year after his annual compensation was cut by 42 percent: $1,680,000

Amount a fourth-grade Denver class has raised since last March to buy and free Sudanese slaves: $35,000

Number of Sudanese no longer enslaved as a result: 600

Estimated number of Chinese who die each day from smoking-related illnesses: 2,000

Percentage change since 1997 in the number of South Korean suicides: +36

Estimated number of people, per 10,000, who died of starvation in one Sudanese village over ten days last July: 69

Average number of daily deaths per 10,000 that constitutes an internationally recognized “emergency”: 2

Number of tourists taken hostage by striking Club Med workers in Martinique for three days last November: 287

Average number of tourists who visit the South African township of Soweto each day: 1,000

Estimated number of U.S. Christians who moved to Jerusalem's Mount of Olives last year to await the millennium: 100

Estimated number of wind-surfing lessons per week provided for soldiers at Kuwait's U.S. Army base: 60

Number of scuba sets available: 85

Average amount the U.S. military spent last year on recruiting, per soldier enlisted: $7,187

Average amount spent in 1989: $5,460

Average profit U.S. businesses earn per worker for every $1 spent on salary and benefits: $2.15

Average profit in 1995: $1.85

Number of S&Ls or shareholder groups seeking damages from the government over its handling of the 1980s bailout: 120

Estimated amount by which the awards sought will exceed the bailout's original $165 billion cost: $50,000,000,000

Number of paragraphs of the 1999 federal budget devoted to passing these costs on to taxpayers: 2

Number of survivors of Spanish-American War soldiers who received Veterans Department benefits last year: 1,028

Amount the family of Osama bin Laden was paid by Saudi Arabia to construct U.S. barracks there this year: $150,000,000

Percentage change since 1987 in incidents of international terrorism worldwide: -50

Number of the world's countries that are required by the 1984 Torture Convention to indict or extradite suspected torturers: 122

Number of times since 1994 that the ACLU has sued New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: 17

Number of times it has won: 15

Percentage of local TV news directors who say their stations have been sued for libel since 1995: 38

Percentage who say they have dropped “important information” from a story since then for fear of being sued: 28

Ratio of reporters who covered John Glenn's 1998 shuttle flight to those who covered his first space flight in 1962: 7:1

Percentage by which box-office receipts at theaters running the new Star Wars trailer rose on the day of its appearance: 25

Portion of the audience at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre that day who left before the feature film began: 1/3

Number of Jeopardy! championships won by freshman Democratic Representative Rush Holt: 6

Number of “real ideological differences” within the Democratic Party, according to Senator Robert Torricelli: 0

Number of DON'T IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT IF IT INTERRUPTS MY SOAPS! T-shirts printed by Soap Opera Digest last fall: 250

Weeks after DNA testing confirmed Bill Clinton's adultery last fall that such testing confirmed Thomas Jefferson's as well: 7

Patent number awarded Abraham Lincoln in 1849 on a device for “buoying vessels over shoals”: 6,469

Number of products licensed last year by the New York entrepreneur who trademarked the sequence 01-01-00: 1,000

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