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Sunday, December 28, 2008

interesting facts about gold

Exactly what is that fascinating and beautifully rare metallic element, so highly venerated since the dawn of creation? Gold: everyone knows what it is, but not everyone knows how truly amazing it is. Did you know…?

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

Gold is so rare, only 90,000 tons of it have been taken from the earth in recorded history.

Gold is so malleable and soft that one ounce can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long.

Gold is so malleable that one ounce can be hammered into a sheet so thin it would cover 100 square feet.

South Africa leads the world in gold production. Other countries leading world production are Russia, Canada, and the United States.

Gold is so heavy that one cubic foot of it weighs one half a ton.

A one ounce natural gold nugget is rarer than a 5 carat diamond

All the gold in the world could be compressed into an 18 yard cube.

Experts estimate that there are only 41,000 tons of gold left in the earth to mine.

Gold has been used by man for more than 66 centuries, In fact, the first nugget mined, now over 6,000 years old, probably exists in some form today because of its durability, considering the way gold is remelted and recast, that first nugget could be part of a ring, watch, or gold chain that you are wearing.

Gold can be fired into clays to produce incredibly stunning porcelain or glass.

here are gold mines in South Africa that are more than a mile deep!

Gold has the chemical symbol Au, short for the Latin word for gold, ‘Aurum”.