In 1900, there were fewer than 3,000 cars in France. Tyre makers André and Édouard Michelin published a free guide to encourage motorists to travel: town maps, garages, hotels and tips on fixing a tyre. The logic was simple: the more people drove, the more tyres they wore out. The guide started charging in 1920, and its famous stars for good restaurants first appeared in 1926.
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.