Around 1870, a worker in Western Europe or North America put in nearly 3,000 hours a year, often six days a week. Today the average there is around 1,400 to 1,800 hours, according to data compiled by Our World in Data. Part of the productivity gains has been turned into free time: paid holidays, weekends and retirement are recent inventions.
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.