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Significant Digits For Thursday, July 21, 2016

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news. Are you at the Republican National Convention and want to chat? Email me!


3 months

After a coup attempt against him failed, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has declared a three-month state of emergency. [The Associated Press]


Relevant weeklong sidebar: It’s the Republican National Convention! FiveThirtyEight has sent its crack political team — and also for some inexplicable reason me — to “the Cleve” (as it was called on “30 Rock” so I assume it’s true) to cover the events. FiveThirtyEight has its own show on ABC News Digital at 5 p.m. ET each evening of the convention, so tune in to that! I’ll be on the stream later on in the evening, so watch that too.


23 December 1888

That’s the date Vincent Van Gogh sent a young woman a portion of his ear. Until yesterday, almost 130 years later, we never knew her name: Gabrielle Berlatier. [The Guardian]


80 percent

The newest Gorilla Glass — the cell phone screen glass designed to resist breaking from moderate falls — is reported to survive falls of 5.25 feet 80 percent of the time. As a person who has single-handedly carried out a long series of stress tests on my phone — resulting in the untimely smashing of way more than I would prefer to acknowledge — I think this is great news. [The Verge]


€280 million

Ireland’s 2015 GDP growth rate came in blazing hot at 26 percent, but it’s not the result of actual growth. It’s largely due to companies dumping assets into the country, thanks to its favorable tax regime. This means Ireland will now owe a further €280 million to the European Union, which calculates members’ contributions in part on GDP. [The Irish Times]


$1 billion

Dollar Shave Club, which sends its 3.2 million members disposable razors on a regular schedule and also has never made a profit, was bought by Unilever for a reported $1 billion. [BBC]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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