Gold is on everyone's mind right now. It's setting record prices at over $1300/ounce. That's great if you have some gold to sell, but any custom designed jewelry is going to hurt the pocketbook.
Here are some interesting facts about gold, one of the most important metals in human history.
1. Approxamatly 165,000 tonnes of gold have been mined as of 2009. This is the world stock of gold, so there is a fixed amount is what get's traded back and forth, adjusting it's price in the local currency.
2. Gold is the most malleable metal known. It can be worked into a sheet so thin as to be semi-transparent, and is even used as foil and food decoration.
3. Semi-transparent sheets of gold are used in sun visors for space suits.
4. Injectable gold reduces the pain and swelling of rhumatoid arthritis. Though eating gold is non-toxic, it doesn't get assimilated into the system and goes out the same way it came in.
5. Gold's malliability makes a superior cap and crown then porcelain. It's also a fashion statement to sport gold fillings.
6. 50% of all gold ever produced comes from South Africa.
7. At $1200/ounce, all the gold in the world is worth approxamately 6.6 Trillion dollars.
8. India is the largest consumer of gold, buying 800 tonnes of gold yearly.
9. Many sayings involving gold have surfaced with a good connotation, eg. golden rule, golden mean, golden boy.
10. Historically the gold standard is the most stable form of money supply and keeps inflation (and bad policy) in check.
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