2014 by the numbers

18,136,006

The total Tweets mentioning “#Ferguson” sent in August, after unarmed teenager Micheal Brown was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson. Twitter mentions spiked again after a grand jury declined to indict Wilson, making Ferguson the most tweeted-about story of the year by a longshot, according to analytics firm Echelon Insights. 

A survey of 184.5 million tweets shows the happenings in Ferguson, Missouri were the biggest news story of 2014, courtesy of Echelon Insights.

$3.7 billion

The entire cost of the 2014 midterm elections, which saw Republicans take over the Senate and grow their majority in the House. Incidentally, Bloomberg points out that three of the country’s biggest campaign donors saw their net worth increase by that same amount.

7,842

The worldwide death toll of this year’s Ebola outbreak, largely in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, though several cases were reported in the U.S. this fall.

46 percent

That’s how far the price of oil dropped in 2014, thanks in part to more output from domestic fracking. Prices are expected to stay low well into 2015. Last month we did a whole show about oil’s role in the economy. 

Courtesy:Wall Street Journal