Facts About Gold

The atomic number of gold, which means there are 79 protons in the nucleus of every atom of gold.

One ounce of gold can be stretched to a length of 50 miles; the resulting wire would be just five microns wide.

One ounce of pure gold could be hammered into a single sheet nine metres square.

Over 90 percent of the world’s gold has been mined since the California Gold Rush.

Julius Caesar gave two hundred gold coins to each of his soldiers from the spoils of war in defeating Gaul.

Fort Knox holds 4,600 tonnes of gold.

And the US Federal Reserve holds 6,200.

The temperature of the human body is 37 degrees centigrade. Because of gold’s unique conductivity, gold jewellery rapidly matches your body’s heat, becoming part of you.

In 95 BC, Chinese Emperor Hsiao Wu I minted gold commemorative piece to celebrate the sighting of a unicorn.

Gold is edible. Some Asian countries put gold in fruit, jelly snacks, coffee, and tea. Since at least the 1500s, Europeans have been putting gold leaf in bottles of liquor, such as Danziger Goldwasser and Goldschlager. Some Native American tribes believed consuming gold could allow humans to levitate.

The chemical symbol for gold is Au, from the Latin word aurum meaning “shining dawn” and from Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. In 50 B.C., Romans began issuing gold coins called the Aureus and the smaller solidus.

Between A.D. 307 and 324, the worth of one pound of gold in Rome rose from 100,000 denarii (a Roman coin) to 300,000 denarii. By the middle of the fourth century, a pound of gold was worth 2,120,000,000 denarii—an early example of runaway inflation, which was partly responsible for the collapse of the Roman Empire.