Harper’s Index

Ratio of U.S. students killed in or near schools since last August to those killed in the 1992 school year: 1:2¹

Chance that a student death at school in the last year was a suicide: 1 in 5²

Chance that the murder of a student at school in the last two years was caused by beating, strangling, or knife wounds: 1 in 4³

Year in which George W. Bush first described juvenile “superpredators” as “fatherless, jobless, fearless, and godless”: 1996⁴

Year in which his father attended a CIA intelligence meeting wearing a red wig and false nose: 1975⁵

Rank of broccoli and peaches, respectively, among U.S.-grown produce with the highest residual pesticide levels: 18,1⁶

Number of state and county fairs that participated in last year's National Best Spam Recipe Contest: 77⁷

Weight in pounds of Thailand's 1999 Jumbo Queen, displaying “the grace, elegance, and enormity of an elephant”: 352⁸

Weight in pounds of a bronze elephant donated to the U.N. last year by Kenya, Namibia, and Nepal: 7,000⁹

Number of days before its unveiling last winter that shrubs and potted trees were positioned to obscure its penis: 1¹⁰

Circumference in inches of the biceps of the G.I. Joe Extreme doll introduced last year, if he were six feet tall: 27.3¹¹

Number of purple hearts in the U.S. inventory in 1985: 121,475¹²

Number that the Defense Logistics Agency has requisitioned since: 9,000¹³

Minimum number of Geneva Convention violations of which NATO was accused last May by a lawyers' group: 18¹⁴

Number of days it took the German army to conquer Yugoslavia in World War II's “Operation Punishment”: 11¹⁵

Number of troops that could have prevented Rwanda's 1994 genocide, according to the head of U.N. forces there then: 5,000¹⁶

Average number of Zimbabweans killed each week by AIDS: 2,500¹⁷

Average number of Americans killed each week by prescription drugs: 1,900¹⁸

Number of ranks by which 18 U.S. sailors were demoted last April after refusing anthrax vaccinations: 1¹⁹

Percentage of the medical supplies bought since 1996 under Iraq's oil-for-food program that has been distributed: 43²⁰

Ratio of eggs rolled on the White House lawn last Easter to bombs dropped on Serbia during its Orthodox holy week: 1:1²¹

Ratio of the amount J. P. Morgan paid a man to fight in his place in the Civil War to what he spent on cigars in 1863: 1:1²²

Ratio of annual per capita alcoholic-beverage consumption in the U.S. to that in Russia: 8:3²³

Percentage change since last year in the number of Russians enrolled in Hebrew classes: +80²⁴

Percentage change since January 1998 in the number of Russian Jews moving to Israel: +100²⁵

Tons of uranium from Russia's nuclear arsenal that the country will sell to a U.S. company over the next twenty years: 500²⁶

Annual cost of containing plants and animals accidentally irradiated at Washington's Hanford Nuclear Site: $2,000,000²⁷

Pounds of plutonium that a British nuclear plant has dumped into the Irish Sea since 1959: 397²⁸

Percentage change in the number of ponds in Britain since the turn of the century: -75²⁹

Number of days last year that a British art museum exhibited a mound of dung from Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep: 51³⁰

Apparent age, in years, of three-year-old Dolly's DNA: 9³¹

Age at which Elizabeth Dole became a Republican: 39³²

Age at death last March of the sturgeon Nikita, Khrushchev's gift to Norway, after an accidental immersion in salt water: 38³³

Number of live contraband Chinese chipmunks that the Dutch government ordered KLM to shred last April: 440³⁴

Number of CIA laptops containing top-secret information sold inadvertently at a government-surplus auction in 1995: 25³⁵

Days after President Roosevelt's death in April 1945 that Vice President Truman was told the atomic bomb existed: 13³⁶

Days it took Eleanor Roosevelt that year to decline an invitation to run for U.S. senator from New York: 5³⁷

Chance that a New York Times article about Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign this year mentions her husband: 1 in 3³⁸

Number of Washington, D.C., cherry trees felled last spring by beavers: 4³⁹

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