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Significant Digits For Monday, June 8, 2015

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2:26.65

American Pharoah, the horse, won the Belmont Stakes on Saturday in under two and a half minutes, securing a Triple Crown win. He is the 12th horse to do so. Good for him! People are very happy for the horse. His descendants will now be more expensive to procure than they would have been otherwise. [CNN]


3 years

Chris Dodd was elected to a three-year contract extension as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America. [The New York Times]

12 percent drop

A survey by the Associated Press found a 12 percent decrease in abortions across 45 states since 2010. [Associated Press]

20th

Serena Williams won the French Open on Saturday, the 20th Grand Slam title of her career. [ESPN]

41 percent

In elections this past weekend, Turkey saw a large drop in support for the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With 41 percent of the vote, the AKP won a plurality but lost its majority in Parliament. [The New York Times]

46 cents

After a court ruling, the U.S. Postal Service must reverse a hike in postage for first-class letters. USPS raised the price of a stamp to 49 cents from 46 cents last year (essentially justifying your irrational decision to load up on Forever stamps a couple of years back), but the direct-mail industry fought back. [MSN]

193

Number of individuals who have signed onto the Warren Buffett-Bill Gates pledge to give away half their net worth in life or death. [Bloomberg]

70,000 pounds of bacon

An Amtrak train crashed into a truck hauling 70,000 pounds of bacon, about six days’ supply at my house. [NBC Chicago]

$30 million

Early reports are showing that Melissa McCarthy’s “Spy” won the weekend at the box office, beating out bromantic comedy and Mark Wahlberg fan fiction “Entourage.” [The Hollywood Reporter]

200 million

Estimate for the number of people who use ad-blocking software when browsing the Internet. No comment. [The Economist]

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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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