The red cross on a white background, adopted in 1864, is the Swiss flag with its colours reversed. The red crescent, used by the Ottoman Empire from the 1870s, was officially recognised in 1929. In 2005 a third emblem was adopted: the red crystal, a red square frame standing on its point, free of any religious or national meaning. It can frame a national society's own symbol, which allowed Israel's Magen David Adom, with its red Star of David, to join the Movement in 2006.
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.