On 20 April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the futures contract for US WTI crude for May delivery closed at minus $37.63 a barrel. Lockdowns had crushed demand, and storage tanks, especially at Cushing, Oklahoma, were nearly full. Some contract holders, unable to take physical delivery of the oil, paid to get rid of it. By the next day, the price was back above zero.
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.