Think you know everything about gold?

Here’s some more golden facts to widen your repertoire and make you a quiz team hero:

1.    The word “money” and “mint” comes from the Roman Goddess, Moneta – when the Gauls attacked the Romans it was the geese who were kept as an early warning that alerted the defenders to the attack – as a result of saving all the gold, the Romans built a shrine to “Moneta” Goddess of Warnings and the link between treasure (money) and gold was established;

2.    The San Francisco 49’ers are so named after the 1849 Gold Rush;

3.    The Bible has more than 400 references to gold within it, far more than any other element or substance and also there are specific mandates to cover holy furniture with gold especially the tabernacle;

4.    Gold is one of the oldest known metals to man having been discovered some 5,000 years ago along with copper;

5.    If you think gold is a heavy way of carting your money around, give a thought for those in the days before gold coins were used – cattle, sheep and even slaves were used as forms of currency until gold took over;

6.    Hyper-inflation and the ever increasing cost of gold was the main reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire – in AD 307 one pound of gold was worth 100,000 denarii but by the beginning of the end of the Empire, AD 350 it was 2,120,000,000 – the legionaries could not be paid and the barbarian hordes could not be bribed to stay away;

7.    In the Medieval times, drinking molten gold with emeralds in it was considered a cure for the Black Death;

8.    Alchemists have long sought a way to turn “base” metals into gold but only with modern nuclear science has this become possible except the cost of doing so vastly outweighs the value of the gold produced – nevertheless, it was the search for turning metals such as lead into gold which laid the foundations for numerous scientific discoveries and modern chemistry without which we would have very little of our society today;

9.    The gold ducat was introduced in 1824 by the city-state of Venice – gold coins were the standard for the following 500 years and even today, gold plays a significant role in stabilizing economies and underpinning financial transactions on a global basis;

10.    The Spanish Inquisition used gold as a form of execution – molten gold was poured down the throat of the victim and this ensured no blood was shed;

11.    The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the largest repository of gold bullion in the world (not Fort Knox, Kentucky as many believe) – most of the gold stored in New York does not belong to the United States but to other countries around the world;

12.    The “troy” as in troy ounce, comes from the French city of Troyes where the system of weights and measures was first developed to deal with gold;

13.    The purity of gold is described in terms of “carats” – carat is itself derived from carob seeds which were first used as counter-measures on scales for measuring the weight of gold and subsequently diamonds.

By Eric, a writer for Refinity.com, where you can make money if you wish to sell gold or sell old coins.

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Just for fun here are some random facts about gold you may not have known:

1.    Gold has been discovered on every continent including both the Arctic and Antarctic;
2.    The world produces more steel in one hour than it has produced gold since man began collecting it;
3.    Over three-quarters of the gold extracted has been produced since 1910 – the California gold rush helped colonize the West but did little to contribute to the amount of gold reserves in the world;
4.    Gold topped $1,000 an ounce for the first time in history in March 2008;
5.    A stock-market analyst questioned whether Google or Gold was the better investment in 2005 when both traded at the same levels – in December 2008 Google traded at $307.65 but gold was over $866 an ounce;
6.    An ounce of gold can be turned into a thread 50 miles long;
7.    An ounce of gold can be hammered into a sheet 15 meters square;
8.    The Al-Aqsa Mosque or Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Israel is entirely covered by gold leaf;
9.    Gold can be eaten!  Some countries in the Far East actually use gold as a dietary supplement in jellies, coffee and tea while in the US it is added to liquor such as Goldwasser and Goldschlager;
10.    American Indians believed that eating gold could make you fly;
11.    The name “gold” is thought to come from the earliest European/Indo-Asian languages – “ghol” or “ghel” can mean yellow, green or bright;
12.    Gold is one form of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis;
13.    Gold melts at 1064.43 degrees Centigrade;
14.    Gold does not rust;
15.    80% of the world’s total amount of gold has yet to be mined – it is still in the ground!;
16.    In a productive mine it requires 30 tons of ore to extract one ounce of gold;
17.    In a productive mine it takes 400 tons of earth to extract 30 tons of ore to get that one ounce of gold!;
18.    4,000 gallons of water are required to produce one ounce of gold;
19.    Pirates broke gold coins down into 8 pieces to pay their bar tabs – this is the origin of the phrase, “Pieces of Eight”;
20.    The first gold rush in America did not take place in California but North Carolina in 1803;
21.    The first recorded gold mine was in Nubia, or modern day Egypt some 4,500 years ago;
22.    Some scholars have wryly noted that while Moses was on the Mount receiving the Commandments, the jews had sufficient gold to make a false idol in the shape of a calf which they worshiped – it did not occur to them to buy their freedom with that gold but perhaps this was because gold was not then associated with money;
23.    Gold is one of the gifts made to the baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men (along with frankincense and myrhh); and
24.    The chemical symbol for gold is Au, this stems from the Latin word, Aurum from the Greek Goddess of the darn, Aurora.

Bonus fact: you can sell your gold online. Try Refinity.com.

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