In 2010, UNESCO added the 'gastronomic meal of the French' to its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. What it recognised was not French cuisine as such but a social practice: choosing good produce, pairing food and wine, setting a fine table, moving through the courses from aperitif to digestif, and above all sharing. The same year, traditional Mexican cuisine and the Mediterranean diet joined the list.
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.