11/84Estimated hours of work that are lost each year to alcoholism: 2,500,000,000
Estimated hours of work that are lost each year because of menstrual cramps: 576,000,000
3/84Total hours of television watched in American households in 1983: 213,000,000,000
6/84Total man-hours spent mowing lawns in the United States each year: 2,254,000,000
6/85Hours spent on strike by Italians in 1979: 192,700,000
12/86Percentage of college students who say they spend more than half their waking hours worrying: 15
10/87Additional hours Americans will spend on paperwork in 1987 as a result of the 1986 Tax Reform Act: 105,000,000
11/87Total number of hours the Grateful Dead has played “Dark Star” in concert: 46
5/87Hours of nursing care the average hospitalized AIDS patient requires each day: 9
7/87Total amount of time Maj. Gen. Richard Secord has spent in Central America (in hours): 6
8/87Hours that Leave It to Beaver is on the air each week in Des Moines: 6
2/89Amount of time it would take for all the Coca-Cola ever sold to flow over Niagara Falls, in hours: 23
3/89Amount of time it takes to ride the entire length of the New York City subway system, in hours: 30
4/89Jail sentence a Tucson judge gave a lawyer last year for wearing green tennis shoes in his courtroom, in hours: 40
4/89Average number of points a student gains on the math section of the SAT per 100 hours of preparatory classes: 39
7/89Percentage change, since 1979, in the average number of hours of television devoted to public affairs: -51
10/90Hours it took Jennifer Norwood of the PMRC to transcribe the lyrics of 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be: 9
4/90Number of hours after Charles Stuart’s suicide that the first contract was negotiated for a book about the case: 48
4/90Estimated amount of time that Michael Jordan has spent aloft while playing in NBA games, in hours: 3
7/90Total number of hours each school day the children of the president of Mexico spend learning Japanese: 3
7/90Number of uninterrupted hours a Boston girl played Nintendo before having an epileptic seizure: 3
1/91Hours after the 1991 tax increase was passed that President Bush promised to “hold the line on taxes” from now on: 13
10/91Number of hours Linda Judson of Cobb County, Georgia, spent in jail last May for failing to return a rented videotape: 2
7/91Number of hours that U.S. convenience-store employees spend counting pennies each year: 5,500,000
2/92Hours a former Communist Party official stood in line for sugar last fall before committing suicide the next day: 4
6/92Average number of hours per year that a Japanese automaker in the United States spends training each production worker: 53
1/94Hours the average Chinese worker must work to earn the price of an ice-cream cone at Beijing’s new Baskin-Robbins: 7
12/94Hours of psychotherapy California’s Contra Costa County exchanged for each handgun turned in this year: 3
10/95Hours of Newt Gingrich lectures to be broadcast in Phoenix jails this year as part of the sheriff’s “get tough” campaign: 20
10/95Hours per day that the L.A. Central Jail runs its dry-cleaning machines to prepare prisoners’ street clothes for storage: 24
12/95Percentage change since 1990 in hours of counseling required by L.A. police employees and their families: +96
9/95Hours it took six residents of a Washington town to renovate a local intersection after waiting ten years for the state to do it: 6
3/96Hours Shaquille O’Neal spent snowed in at a Pennsylvania hotel in January with the cast of Sesame Street on Ice: 45
4/96Hours an Oklahoma teenager was detained by police last year for wiping his dipstick with an American flag: 2.5
Change in the number of measures passed: -198
9/96Hours of study required to lose a Long Island accent, according to Long Island’s Professional Voice Care Center: 52
10/97Hours after being elected last July that Liberia’s new leader promised not to be “a wicked president”: 1
11/97Factor by which the B-2 stealth-bomber’s maintenance hours have exceeded its flight hours since last year: 124
2/97Hours of training required to become a licensed hair braider in New York City: 900
Hours of training required to become a New York City emergency medical technician: 117
4/97Hours that 3 miles of Nebraska’s Route 83 were closed last fall when a truck carrying two nuclear bombs overturned: 2
5/97Average number of hours per week of public service performed last year by each Ohio prisoner who volunteered for it: 4.3
1/98Number of hours a Moscow hotel flew a Microsoft flag within view of Red Square last fall when Bill Gates visited: 36
Number of lunches Gates ate in Moscow that were not from McDonald’s: 0
10/98Hours it took two men last July to win a contest to decode the federal government’s data-scrambling system: 56
5/98Number of consecutive hours that a Maryland man spent kissing a motorboat last winter in order to win it in a contest: 59
1/99Hours after ABC’s technical union declared a strike last fall that Al Gore canceled an ABC interview: 12
1/99Hours after Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic agreed to last fall’s Kosovo peace plan that he closed two newspapers: 12
10/99Hours after the Woodstock riots last summer that a participant told a reporter he couldn’t wait to see them on TV: 6
5/99Average duration in hours of the stupor induced in Japanese beetles by the consumption of geraniums: 8
6/99Hours before NATO began bombing Kosovo in March that NPR aired its last e-mail from a 16-year-old Albanian girl there: 6
6/99Estimated maximum number of hours that a male june bug will cling to its partner after copulation: 2
7/99Hours after NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last May that the U.S. apologized to China: 23
9/99Maximum amount of time that a suspect in Florida can be held in jail without being assigned a lawyer, in hours: 24
9/99Hours of helicopter lessons required for the new “Super Butler” degree at London’s most expensive butler school: 60
1/00Hours required to assemble a prefabricated nuclear-bomb shelter, according to a 1961 Life magazine cover story: 4
11/00Estimated number of hours of labor performed by African-American slaves between 1619 and 1865: 222,505,049
Estimated value of that labor, compounded at 6 percent interest through 1993: $97,100,000,000,000
11/00Hours after an Australian fisherman fell overboard in August that his head was found in the belly of a 98-pound cod: 21
2/00Hours during which Rio de Janeiro drivers may legally run red lights in order to avoid being carjacked: 10 P.M.-5 A.M.
2/00Hours it took a Tennessee jury last December to decide that the assassination of Martin Luther King was a conspiracy: 2
6/00Hours of cooking required to remove the “toxins” from tomatoes, according to an 1860 women’s magazine: 3
1/01Hours during which free speech is permitted in Singapore’s Hong Lim Park: 7 a.m.-7 p.m.
1/01Total number of hours spent on congressional hearings investigating violence in entertainment since May 1999: 16
11/01Hours after the September 11 attack that an Alaska congressman speculated that it may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9
3/01Hours it took Canadian election workers last year to hand count 13 million ballots cast in their general election: 5
4/01Hours after taking office in 1993 that Bill Clinton ordered a five-year delay on lobbying by ex-White House officials: 1
5/01Estimated number of “crush films” involving live rodents and high-heeled women seized from a New York man in 1999: 70
9/01Hours that Amherst College agreed to ban coffee last term as part of a student’s performance piece about the drug war: 24
11/02Average number of hours that the calories consumed in an American’s Thanksgiving Day meal could power a 27” TV: 49
12/02Hours after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld learned Bin Laden was a suspect that he sought reasons to “hit”Iraq: 2.5
5/02Hours for which New Orleans’s airport was partly evacuated in February over a package later found to contain gumbo: 5
7/02Number of hours Israeli soldiers in Ramallah broadcast pornography on seven Palestinian television stations in March: 48
7/03Hours Alexander Hamilton spent in 1787 arguing at the Constitutional Convention that America should have a king: 5
8/03Number of candy-bar wrappers that Cadbury’s new anti-obesity campaign offers to exchange for a basketball: 90
Minimum hours of basketball required for an 85-pound child to burn off the calories from that many candy bars: 100
11/04Ratio of hours of live U.S.-convention coverage per U.S. network this year to hours of live coverage on Al Jazeera: 1:2
1/05Hours after Kerry conceded that a New Yorker posted a personal ad seeking a Bush supporter for a “fair, physical fight”: 5
Number who asked to watch: 9
6/05Average number of hours it takes to read a weekday Washington Post out loud: 28
10/06Hours after the start of its war against Hezbollah that Israel’s army chief sold $32,000 of his stock holdings: 3
10/06Energy, in megawatt hours, saved over thirty-five years by a bicycle rider who does not drive a car: 109
Portion of these savings that will be used up over the extra years the biker will live: 9/10
2/06Number of dominoes that a wayward sparrow toppled just before a Dutch world-record attempt in November: 23,000
4/06Chance that a passenger on a flight of two and a half hours or longer will have a cold within a week: 1 in 5
7/06Length, in hours, of a book appearance that author Lawrence Lessig made in January inside an online fantasy world: 2
Minimum number of different characters who showed up: 100
11/07Average number of hours of housework that a boyfriend in a cohabiting couple does each week: 10
3/07Minimum hourly wage last year of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives: $203.95
Minimum wage this year, given new rules that require more hours in session: $139.97
11/08Average number of hours per week that an American and a Chinese person, respectively, spend shopping: 4, 10
3/08Percentage of full-time university faculty in 1992 who taught less than four hours per week: 15
Percentage today: 30
7/08Hours each day that house cats must engage in social “activities,” according to new Swedish regulations: 2
1/09Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9
3/09Average number of hours of television watched per week by Americans aged 43 to 61: 19
Average number watched by those aged 26 to 42 and those aged 14 to 25, respectively: 15, 11