Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Local Newscast
Hear the latest from the WRKF/WWNO Newsroom.

From Pandas To Health Care: The 13 Numbers Of 2013

0: Twitter collected no profit, Snapchat collected no revenue, and Apple's stock has roughly stayed flat over the past year. But in Silicon Valley, where companies are judged by potential, zero is still something.

0.5 billion: Public money in Minnesota paid for almost half the cost of the Vikings' new $1 billion stadium. As it turns out, a deal like this is fairly standard.

1,134: When a garment factory building collapsed in Bangladesh in April, killing 1,134 people, the world suddenly started watching the industry there more closely.

1.6 million: The federal government pays farmers to keep land covered with native grass and trees, but this year, it removed that protection from 1.6 million acres of land. The reason? High grain prices.

4.6 million: The cleanup from BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still ongoing, with more than 4.6 million pounds of oil collected this year. That's still not all of it.

6: "Unfortunately the site was only designed to handle six users at a time." Unfortunately for HealthCare.gov, the SNL writers were spot on.

11,420: The civil war in Syria presents many staggering numbers, but one captures the tragedy like no other: 11,420 children have died in the conflict, so far.

17: "It seemed like every time you would refresh your browser, there was a new film going down in flames at the box office." If you think this summer was bloated with blockbusters, just wait till 2015.

34: An unusually high number of wildland firefighters died in the line of duty this year. With a lot of undeveloped wildland in the West, some are asking whether people should be living in these forests at all.

38: The percentage of Americans who live in states that allow same-sex marriage is growing. "There seemed to be sort of a joke as I traveled around the country, saying if you blink, you're going to miss a state that becomes the next state to recognize marriage for same-sex couples."

42: A record baby boom shows captive breeding programs for pandas are working.

50: After bankruptcy, government takeovers, recalls and public relations disasters, the auto industry has rebounded again, growing by 50 percent since 2009.

365: The Minnesota Orchestra hasn't performed in its concert hall at all this year. It's become a poster child for labor strife in classical music, and to some, emblematic of problems facing nonprofit arts institutions across the country.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags