Going for GOLD
1 The word gold comes from the Germanic word gelbe, meaning yellow.
2 Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was 19 when he popped his clogs and was sent off to the afterlife with a tomb full of gold. 1.5 tonnes of it was found in the coffin which archaeologists discovered in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.
3 King Croesus of Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, created the first pure gold coins in 540 BC.
4 The five-star Emirates Palace Hotel in Dubai set up a bullion vending machine in 2010, which also spits out gold coins.
5 Pure gold is stretchy and an ounce could reach 50 miles long without breaking. If you put together all that exists in the world it could reach around the Earth 11 million times.
6 Ancient Romans used gold to make dental bridges for knackered teeth but would remove them, and any gold teeth, from corpses before they were buried.
7 Gold has also been used for injections to help reduce pain from rheumatoid arthritis and shrink cancerous tumours.
8 Even though they signify coming in first place and have a yellow disc on a ribbon, modern Olympic gold medals are made mostly of 92.5% silver then plated with at least six grammes of pure gold.
9 When mixed with other metals gold gets stronger and also changes colour. White gold is achieved by adding nickel or palladium and rose gold earns its tinge from copper.
10 NASA coats instruments it needs to keep cool in gold to protect them from radiation – including the James Webb telescope. Space suits and spacecraft are coated in gold to reflect harmful rays from the sun.
11 The biggest stash of gold which we have yet to mine is in outer space with asteroid 16 Psyche – floating around between Mars and
Jupiter – said to be home to a quintillions-worth.
12 There’s also an estimated 10billion tons of gold in the world’s oceans which we cannot access.
13 Pure gold is safe enough to eat and, unlike other metals, doesn’t cause any allergic reactions – which is good news for someone like motormouth Jeremy Clarkson, who irritates lots of people but gets rubbed up the wrong way by nickel.
14 A one-tonne Australian Kangaroo is the biggest gold coin in the Guinness World Records book, which is 99.99% pure gold, is 80cm in diameter and 12cm thick.
15 Molten gold was poured down the throat of a Spanish governor in Ecuador in 1599 due to a tax that the Jivaro tribe felt was excessive. Romans and the Spanish Inquisition also used this method for executions.