In 2025, fully electric cars made up about 96% of new car registrations in Norway, according to the Norwegian road traffic information council, OFV, up from 89% in 2024. Ten years earlier, their share was around 17%. Exemptions from hefty purchase taxes and long-standing discounts on tolls and parking often made electric cars cheaper than petrol or diesel ones. The country had aimed for 100% zero-emission new cars by 2025, and came very close.
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.