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Significant Digits For Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.


99L

Invest 99L is an area of disturbed weather in the Eastern Caribbean that could become a tropical storm named Hermine if it grows in strength. Its proximity to states on the Gulf coast has NOAA already sending out aircraft to investigate. [FiveThirtyEight]


$356.01

Amount paid to the speechwriter behind Melania Trump’s RNC speech — portions of which were plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the DNC — by the Trump campaign. [The Hill]


$1,040,000

CRIME OF THE CENTURY: Two men were arrested in Brooklyn after allegedly stealing 2,000 boxes of frozen imported eel worth $1,040,000. [ABC 7 New York]


11 million pounds of cheese

The USDA will spend about $20 million on 11 million pounds of cheese to get to food banks and help the domestic cheese industry deal with its largest surplus in 30 years. [USDA via Alex Fitzpatrick]


$25.5 million

How much Oregon has collected in taxation on recreational marijuana since January, which given the state’s sales tax of 25 percent on the bud means that Oregonians smoked about $102 million worth of legal weed so far this year. [Oregon Live]


$675 million

Sales at Jersey Mike’s Subs last year, the fastest growing food chain in the United States. Sandwiches are having the same kind of disruption that the burger business has seen, with the rise of fast-casual subsuming parts of the market previously occupied by fast food. [Bloomberg]


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Walt Hickey was FiveThirtyEight’s chief culture writer.

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