gold, n.Trivia

Gold is extremely malleable --- One ounce of gold can be stretched into a thin wire measuring 50 miles.

Gold is useful -- it is used in electronics, electrical wiring, dentistry, medicine, radiation shielding, and in coloring glass.

Gold is the only metal that is naturally yellow or "golden."

Gold has been mined to the tune of 50% from a single plateau in South Africa: Witwatersrand.

Gold is a heavy metal, but is generally considered nontoxic.

Gold mostly came from meteorites that bombarded earth over 200 million years after it formed.

gold is present in the human body --- a 70 kg person contains 0.2mg of gold

Gold is the most malleable element -- one ounce can be beaten into a 300-square-foot sheet.

More than half of all the gold ever mined comes from a 6.7 square mile area in South Africa (Witwatersrand Basin)

Gold is odorless and tasteless (due to the fact that it is unreactive)

Gold is bounteous in the Earth’s core; enough to cover the whole Earth with a 1.5-foot layer of it.

Doritos is Spanish for “little golden things”

Seventeen tons of gold are turned into wedding rings in the US each year (that's about the size of a kitchen island)

Gold is plentiful in the ocean --- It is estimated that the world's oceans contain 10 billion tons of gold.

Olympic gold medals today only 1.3% gold. Not since 1912 have they been pure gold.

Sailors believed wearing gold earrings improved eyesight.

Gold never erodes

There is 0.2mg of gold in the human blood stream, making a human's blood worth around 10 cents.

2,500 to 3,000 tons of gold are mined is mined each year. (one ton of gold is roughly a 14 inch cube)

Aluminum was once more valuable than gold.