There are about 2 billion children under 15 on Earth, and that number has almost stopped growing. Swedish statistician Hans Rosling called it 'peak child'. So why is the population still rising? Because children born when families were larger are becoming adults and living longer: it's the older age groups that are 'filling up'.
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.