From 1886 to 1959, the price of a Coca-Cola in the United States stayed at 5 cents, through two world wars and the Great Depression. Economists Daniel Levy and Andrew Young dissected this extreme case of price rigidity: a fixed-price bottling contract signed in 1899, advertising that displayed '5 cents' everywhere, then vending machines that only took a single coin. Raising the price became a real headache.
That's the estimate from a WHO-led study published in The Lancet in 2024, covering the half-century since the Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched in 1974. It works out to about six lives saved every minute, mostly infants. The measles vaccine alone accounts for around 60% of those lives.
According to the World Gold Council, about 216,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in all of human history. Because gold is so dense (19.3 tonnes per cubic metre), it would fit in a cube about 22 metres on each side, roughly the height of a seven-storey building. Strikingly, about two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.