Analysing British travel surveys, the RAC Foundation estimated in 2012 that the average car is driven for less than an hour a day. The rest of the time, about 96% of it, the car sits parked, usually at its owner's home. That matters for urban planning: every vehicle needs a space at home, but also at each of the places it goes.
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.