You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
More than 800 years old
The more than 800-year-old Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris was engulfed in flames yesterday, the second day of Holy Week. While its towering spire collapsed, the Paris fire chief said that firefighters had saved the cathedral’s structure from the blaze, stopping its spread to the northern belfry. [Associated Press]
20 percent cut
Pity the financiers. Goldman Sachs missed its revenue expectations by 13 percent — in “a tougher market for the trading and investing businesses” — and cut its employees’ compensation and benefits by 20 percent in the first quarter of this year. Those pay cuts did help the bank beat its profit expectations, however. [CNBC]
A $2.95 million baby T. rex
A 68-million-year-old baby Tyrannosaurus rex named Son of Sampson was put on sale on eBay for $2.95 million and paleontologists aren’t happy, going so far as to take that boldest action of aggrieved academics — an open letter. The scientists believe that such fossils should be “held in public trust” and that only fossil replicas should be sold. That concern aside, one scientist also said that the price of the bones, which are incomplete and broken, was “just absurd.” [Daily Beast]
3 known survivors
One of the four Yangtze giant softshell turtles living in captivity has died in a zoo in southern China. Zookeepers and experts tried for a fifth time to artificially inseminate the turtle, which was over 90 years old, “shortly before she died.” Another male lives in the zoo and the other two remaining rare turtles are in Vietnam. [BBC]
68 percent increase
FiveThirtyEight has been keeping tracking of all of the 2020 Democratic candidates’ coverage on cable news. Last week, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg were atop the field, mentioned on the news more often than the other candidates. And Buttigieg’s mentions continued a steady climb that began about a month ago — they were up 68 percent last week compared to the week before. [FiveThirtyEight]
555 cases
With 90 new confirmed cases last week and 555 in all this year, the ongoing measles outbreaks in the U.S. could set a record, according to public health experts. The current outbreaks, the worst in five years, have affected 20 states and are heavily concentrated among ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. The record was set in 2014 when the U.S. saw 667 reported cases, most of which resulted from an outbreak among unvaccinated Amish communities in Ohio. [The Washington Post]
From ABC News:
News headlines today: April 16, 2019
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