In 1947, copywriter Frances Gerety of the American agency N. W. Ayer came up with a line for diamond company De Beers: 'A Diamond Is Forever'. The campaign tied diamonds firmly to lasting love and helped make the diamond engagement ring a norm in the United States, then in many other countries. In 1999, Advertising Age named it the best advertising slogan of the 20th century.
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.