Every June, the 'gaokao', China's national university entrance exam, mobilises the whole country. In 2024, a record 13.42 million candidates took it, more than the population of Belgium. During the exam, some cities halt construction work and ban honking near test centres, and police sometimes escort late candidates. Numbers have fallen since, to about 12.9 million in 2026.
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.