You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
Hundreds of thousands of people
Hundreds of thousands of people — 240,000 by the police’s reckoning and more than a million by the organizers’ — took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest a bill that would allow the government to extradite people to places with which Hong Kong has no formal extradition agreement, including mainland China. The bill’s critics argue that it would let China prosecute its political opponents in Hong Kong. [NPR]
11.5 ounces
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12th title
Rafael Nadal won his 12th French Open title yesterday, defeating Dominic Thiem, in a rematch of last year’s final, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1. No other tennis player has won a major tournament so often. Nadal now has 18 Grand Slam titles, two shy of Roger Federer’s men’s record of 20. [Associated Press]
$35,000 per night
NASA has announced that it will provide private citizens room and board on the International Space Station — for $35,000 a night. Add to that $18,000 per kilogram for round-trip travel and $17,500 an hour for the astronauts’ time (not including tips, presumably) and pretty soon you’re talking about real money for that space vacation. [The Washington Post]
$33 million
The 12th and apparently final X-Men movie, “Dark Phoenix,” earned just $33 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. That’s the worst debut of any X-Men picture, probably not helped by its 23 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and the fact that it came on the heels of “Avengers: Endgame.” As a FiveThirtyEight writer, my favorite X-Man is Longshot, who has the power of probability field manipulation. [BuzzFeed News]
23 percent chance
The Women’s World Cup is now in full swing in France. The hosts, who beat South Korea 4-0 in their opener, are the championship favorites according to our forecasts, with a 23 percent chance at the title. Team USA, whose first game is Tuesday against Thailand, is second with a 17 percent chance, followed by Germany with an 11 percent chance. [FiveThirtyEight]
137 years
The Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been under construction — illegally — for 137 years. Last week, however, the Roman Catholic church received its building permit at least from the Barcelona city council. Bureaucracy, am I right? [CNN]
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