For thousands of years, the vast majority of humans worked the land. According to the International Labour Organization, 2006 was the year services (retail, transport, healthcare, administration and so on) overtook agriculture as the world's largest employer. Today they account for nearly half of all workers. Farming still employs about a quarter of the global workforce, a far higher share in sub-Saharan Africa than in Europe.
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.