According to UNICEF, the share of young women married before 18 fell from nearly one in four to about one in five over a decade, equivalent to some 25 million child marriages averted. South Asia led the decline, driven by girls' schooling and changing laws. At the current pace, though, UNICEF estimates it would take nearly three centuries to end the practice.
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.