Congrats OP, I also started with 0 merit, so I know your feeling.
I'm not sure why your focus was on those starting with 0 merit. There are many members who have built on their basic rank allotment, and have received a few hundred additional merits. If your focus was on new members with single accounts, then it would be interesting, but I suspect that some in your list could be alts of established members.. That's just a guess, and I haven't done any investigation.
Actually if we do not focus on accounts starting with 0 merits, we see more than 200 accounts reached 100 merits and more, see the list of these accounts here (data taken on May 12):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3759121.msg37064273#msg37064273so this list is close to what OP have in mind, while it did not focus on the initial value of merit they started.