There are a few data sources where you may find datasets for you lab work. You do not need to use these, but they are fairly diverse and may be a good alternative.

Portugal

• Pordata
  
• Instituto Nacional de Estatística
• Lisbon (via CitySDK, including data for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Helsinki, Istambul, Lamia, Manchester and Rome)

Movies

• IMDB
  

Books

• Goodreads shows you pretty much every book in existence and who has read it and how.

Europe

• Eurostat

General Databases

• Freebase
• Infochimps
• Numbrary
• AggData
• Amazon's Public Datasets
• Wikipedia (typically smaller tables)

Geography

• TIGER
• Open Street Map
• Geocommons
• Flickr Shapefiles

Sports

• Basketball References
• Baseball Databank
• Database Football

Government

• Data.gov

World

• Global Health Facts
• UN Data
• World Health Organization
• OECD Statistics
• World Bank

Government/Politics

• Census Bureau
• Data.gov
• Data.gov for the UK
• Data for San Francisco
• Data for New York City
• Follow the Money
• Open Secrets