Under a 2017 law, the Whanganui River on New Zealand's North Island is recognised as a living, indivisible whole with legal personhood, from the mountains to the sea. Its interests are represented by two guardians, one appointed by the Crown and one by the river's Māori tribes. The law settled more than a century of Māori claims; for them, the river is an ancestor. Through its guardians, the river can now stand up for its interests in court.
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.