Gold

GOLD HISTORY

Over 80% of the world's gold was formed by earthquakes—they pull rocks apart so quickly that the fluids inside them vaporize, leaving gold.

Archaeologists have found that the earliest human interest in gold came with Palaeolithic Man, who lived around 40,000BC and hoarded nuggets of natural gold.

The people of Lydia (now western Turkey) introduced gold money around 700BC.

The Ancient Greeks thought that gold was a dense combination of water and sunlight.

24-carat gold and the measurement of purity in divisions of 24 have their origins in the 4th Century when the Romans minted a new gold coin that was the same weight as 24 smaller coins called siliqua.

Before the Spanish conquest of South America, the Incas of Peru used gold for everyday objects such as nails, combs and dishes.

Spain brought back so much Aztec gold that it caused massive inflation and crashed the economy of Europe.

The explorer Martin Frobisher discovered in 1576 what he thought was gold in the Arctic- but it turned out to be a useless mineral called “Fool’s Gold”.

The idea of linking the value of money to the price of gold came in with the US congress. The first gold prices were fixed by Congress on April 2, 1792, at $19.39 an ounce. It’s “Gold Standard” has been maintained despite fluctuations in gold's value, ever since.

The first U.S. gold rush started in North Carolina in 1803 when a 12-year-old boy found a 17-pound gold nugget on his father’s farm. It supplied all the gold for the nation’s mints until 1829.

The "Welcome Stranger" was the name given to the largest gold nugget ever found in the world, with a calculated refined weight of 2,315 oz (72kg). It was discovered by John Deason and Richard Oates at Moliagul, Victoria, Australia on February 5, 1869 about 9 miles north-west of Dunolly. The nugget was found only three centimeters below the surface, near a root of a tree on a slope leading to what was then known as Bulldog Gully.

A wood engraving of the Welcome Stranger published in The Illustrated Australian News for Home Reader on 1 March 1869. The scale bar across the bottom represents 12 inches (30 cm).

The South Korean gold-collecting campaign was a national sacrificial campaign in early 1998 to repay its debt to the International Monetary Fund. 3.51 million people nationwide gave up their gold to help their country. A total of 227 tons of gold worth $2.13 billion was collected.

Korean citizens turning in gold By IM Film

Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time on March 13, 2008. The price of gold had been steadily rising for several years due to a variety of factors, including geopolitical tensions, a weak US dollar, and concerns about inflation. The $1,000 per ounce price level was seen as a significant milestone for gold, which has long been considered a safe-haven asset and a store of value. However, gold prices would eventually drop during the financial crisis later that year before recovering and hitting new highs in subsequent years.

100,000 tons of gold has been mined since 1500 - just enough to fill two Olympic size swimming pools.

FUN GOLD FACTS

One liter of gold weighs 19.3 kg, which roughly corresponds to the weight of a five year old child.

The largest gold ring weighs 82.2kg (181.2 lbs). It was created by China's Monkingran Jewelry Group Co, Ltd in May 2016.

Aurophobia is the fear of gold.

It takes more than two tons of South African rock to produce less than an ounce of gold.

Gold is the sixteenth most rare of the chemical elements.

Gold is so rare that the world pours more steel in an hour than it has poured gold since the beginning of recorded history.

If all the gold produced in the world in the past five centuries were melted down, the result could be compressed into a single cube whose sides are sixty eight feet.

All the gold ever mined in human history is smaller than the Statue of Liberty.

Nearly half of all the gold ever mined in the world has been dug up from a 200 mile-long basin that includes the city of Johannesburg, starting after a gold rush in 1886.

We have had the ability to turn lead and mercury into gold since the 1950's. It's just cheaper to mine so we don't do it on a commercial scale.

Fort Knox holds just under 150 million ounces of gold. In 1941, the figure was 650 million ounces.

About one-fifth of all the gold held by the world’s governments is stored in vaults in and around London.

Indian housewives hold 11% of the world's gold. This is more than the reserves of USA, IMF, Switzerland, and Germany put together.

Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands

There is enough gold in the Earth’s core to coat its entire surface to a depth of 1.5ft.

In 2017 astronomers detected 100 Earths' worth of gold being forged in space. They revealed the first-ever detection of two neutron stars colliding in space. "You smash these two things together at one-third the speed of light, and that's how you make gold," said astronomer Duncan Brown.

The amount of gold in the human body is 0.2mg, which is worth about one cent.

All of the gold mined in the history of the world, could fit into a 20x20x20 metre cube.

Many miners work at the La Rinconada gold mine in the Peruvian Andes. Under the cachorreo system they work for thirty days without payment. On the thirty first day they are allowed to take with them as much ore as they can carry on their shoulders.

Although gold is a heavy, dense metal, it is generally considered non-toxic. Gold metal flakes may be eaten in foods or drinks.

Gold is the most malleable and ductile of metals. This means hat it can be hammered into very thin sheets, thinner than a piece of paper. Gold can be easily worked into different shapes and does not corrode. These characteristics, along with its rarity, account for its value.

Since pure gold is chemically inert, it doesn't taste like anything and can pass through the human digestive system without being absorbed.

The reason why gold is yellow, unlike its grey neighbors on the periodic table, is due to Einstein's special relativity: the electrons are moving so fast, some over half the speed of light, that they have relativistic contraction, shifting the wavelength of light absorbed to blue and thus reflecting a golden glow.

Scientists have made a new form of gold that is 98 per cent air. Aerogel gold — so light it can float on cappuccino foam — could replace an alloy in jewellery-making.

There's more gold in a ton of mobile phones than there is in a ton of gold ore.

Aurophobia is the fear of gold.

Here is a list of songs with the word 'gold' in the title.

Sources So That's Why Bible, Daily Mail