Gold is one of those seemingly mythical substances that somehow came to be equated with extreme value. Even during the Olympics the winning medal is always gold. Why is that? Out of all the metals in the universe why has gold become so valuable? Well, in many ways it has been an interesting course of events that led gold to be considered so highly. For one, it isn’t the rarest metal, not by a long shot. That is not to say that gold isn’t rare…it’s probably even more rare than you think. But there are some elements that are inconceivably rare. As in you could barely find a handful of those elements on the Earth. And gold isn’t particularly interesting. It doesn’t really react with any other elements. So what’s the deal? Well, the boringness of gold is actually what made it very useful as a currency. It wasn’t too rare and it wasn’t too abundant. It wasn’t radioactive and it wasn’t poisonous. Out of all the elements that eliminates most of them (not to mention gasses). From the few that are left (silver, platinum, etc) gold has one distinction…it is yellow-ish. All the others are gray-ish. This means it stands out. And there you go. Gold became the currency of choice and although these days it is no longer used as currency (in most places) it has still retained its value (precisely because it doesn’t react with other elements and therefore tarnish!). These are 25 crazy things you didn’t know about gold!
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1 ton of old cell phones will give you more gold than 1 ton of gold ore.
Source: pacebutler.com, Image: wikipedia If you took all the gold out of the ocean, there would be enough for every person on Earth to have 9 pounds.
Source: noaa.gov, Image: wikipedia To prevent the Nazis from confiscating them, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy melted down the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck. They were recast after the war.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Sailors often wore gold earrings so that if they drowned and washed up on the beach, the earrings would serve as payment for a proper Christian burial.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia The Olympic gold medal is only 1% gold.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia 
