Here is the first in a [possibly never-ending] series of Fun Facts from things like Harper's Magazine's Index.
The latest posted Harper's Index for September 2006 (Digg) has some interesting facts, as usual.
For example:
Percentage of Americans in 1983 who thought it was “possible to start out poor in this country . . . and become rich”: 57
Percentage who think this today: 80
Percentage of U.S. income in 1983 and today, respectively, that went to the top 1 percent of earners: 9, 16
Here is some from August 2006's Index:
Number of AK-47s that have gone missing after being sent by the Pentagon to Iraq last summer: 26,000
Percentage of Americans in May who believed that democracy would take hold in Iraq: 54
Number of the fourteen other nations surveyed where a majority believed this: 3
And June's Index:
Ratio of the average manufacturing wage in the United States to that in Mexico, before NAFTA took effect in 1994: 6:1
Ratio today: 8:1
Flashback to April 1998:
Minimum number of the 10 biological materials suspected in Iraqi warfare research that were supplied by U.S. firms: 9
Months after Martin Luther King Jr. publicly called the U.S. the “world's greatest purveyor of violence” that he was killed: 2
Number of complimentary doughnuts Bob Dole receives each week as part of his Dunkin' Donuts contract: 60
Number he distributed to reporters waiting outside Monica Lewinsky's Watergate apartment last February 2: 48
If anyone else has some other interesting trivia from the Index or elsewhere, feel free to post it in a comment.
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