On 23 March 2021, caught in strong winds, the Ever Given, a 400-metre-long container ship, ran aground across the Suez Canal, then the route for about 12% of global trade. It took six days of dredging and tugging to free it. Meanwhile, hundreds of ships waited at either end. According to shipping journal Lloyd's List, nearly $10 billion worth of goods was held up every day.
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.