According to the WHO, the share of adults worldwide who use tobacco fell from about one in three in 2000 to about one in five in 2022. Taxes, smoking bans in public places, health warnings and plain packaging all played a part. But with around 1.2 billion users, tobacco still kills more than 7 million people a year.
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.