The story goes that in 1637, Dutch people bankrupted themselves over tulip bulbs, triggering ruin and suicides. Historian Anne Goldgar, who combed through the archives, found almost no evidence of widespread ruin: the trading involved mostly well-off merchants, and the economy suffered no lasting damage. The dramatic version owes much to a bestselling book by Charles Mackay, published in 1841.
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.