In March 1966, four months before England hosted the World Cup, the Jules Rimet trophy was stolen from an exhibition in London. A week later, a dog called Pickles, out for a walk with his owner in south London, sniffed out a package wrapped in newspaper under a hedge: it was the cup. Pickles became a national celebrity. The trophy was stolen again in Brazil in 1983, and this time it was never found.
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.