News by the numbers

By tbt* staff report
Published April 13, 2005

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More than 27.5 million hot dogs will be consumed by baseball fans this season, according to a National Hot Dog and Sausage Council survey. Laid end-to-end, that's enough tube steak to stretch from coast to coast. Top dog, in terms of sales, is Dodger Stadium, where 1,674,400 Dodger Dogs were sold last year.Los Angeles Times

The Plaza hotel was bought last year for $675 million -- or about $838,000 a room. That's the most paid for a New York hotel. St. Petersburg Times.

Approximately 150 of the 264 popes are buried at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, where John Paul II was buried last Friday. Washington Post

One of the early favorites for the next pope, Francis Arinze of Nigeria, is the uncle of former Wake Forest basketball player Niki Arinze. The young Arinze averaged 5.4 points and 3.3 rebounds over 21 games in 1999-2000, when the team won the postseason NIT championship over -- wait for it -- Notre Dame. Yahoo news.

The ampersand was originally created by early calligraphers joining together the two letters of the word "et," the Latin word for "and." Some form of the ampersand has been in use in many languages for almost 2,000 years.