May 31: 31

10 things you might not know about the number 31.

1. 31 is a prime number. So are 331, 3331, 33331, 333331, 3333331, and 33333331. However, the next nine numbers of the sequence are not.
2. 31 is the atomic number of gallium, a metal which doesn't occur in its pure form in nature but is found in trace amounts in Zinc ores and in bauxite. When isolated, it is a soft, silvery blue metal at standard temperature and pressure.
3. The number 31 is mentioned 4 times in the Bible. One example is the number of kings defeated by the incoming Israelite settlers in Canaan according to Joshua 12:24: "all the kings, one and thirty".
4. There are 31 letters in the Cyrillic (Russian) and Macedonian alphabets.
5. On a roulette wheel, the number 31 is a Black number and sits between the black numbers 14 and 9 on a European table and 18 and 19 on an American table.
6. 31 is a 2016 horror film directed by Rob Zombie, in which a group of carnival workers are kidnapped.
7. Trente et un is French for 31. It's also an expression in that language for a well-dressed person.
8. According to Hindu texts, the god Pradjapati created the universe by articulating the odd numbers from 1 to 31.
9. There is a card game called 31 in which the object of the game is to assemble a hand in which the card values total 31.
10. The longest reigning Pope, Pope Pius IX, reigned for 31 years (and seven months) from June 16, 1846 to February 7, 1878.

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30th May: The Brassiere

The brassiere was invented on this date in 1889. Here are ten things you might not know about this item of ladies underwear.

1. The word brassiere is actually Norman French for a child's undershirt. It became the word for women's underwear thanks to the Evening Herald in Syracuse, New York, which used the word in 1893, the DeBevoise Company, who used it in their advertising in 1904, and Vogue magazine, who used it in 1907.
2. The wearing of garments to support the breasts probably dates back to Ancient Greece. Women back then would wear bands of wool or linen around their breasts, and pinned at the back.
3. That the bra was invented by a man named Otto Titzling, who lost a lawsuit with Phillip de Brassiere, is an urban myth. The inventors credited with inventing the first bras are all women. Herminie Cadolle of France invented the first modern bra, according to Life Magazine, in 1889. Christine Hardt of Germany patented the first modern brassiere in 1899. Mary Phelps Jacob is credited with inventing the first modern bra using two handkerchiefs and a ribbon, because she didn't like the way her corset looked under her dress.
4. Cup sizes were not introduced until the 1930s, by S.H. Camp and Company. They introduced the sizes A to D. Now, the largest cup size is L while the smallest is a AAA.
5. The average bra size is 36DD. That said, experts claim that about 85% of women are wearing the wrong size. Women with larger breasts tend to buy bras that are too small, while smaller-breasted women buy bras which are too big. Once a woman finds a size that seems to fit, they stick with it, even when their weight changes.
6. Feminists burning their bras wasn't really a thing. At the big demonstration where they allegedly did, they actually just threw their bras into the bin - but reporter Lindsy Van Gelder compared their actions to men burning their draft cards at anti-war protests, hence the belief the bras were burned.
7. The space suits worn by Apollo astronauts were made by the bra makers Playtex. They won the contract against military contractors because their suits had "crucial softness, world class stitching, and perfect design." They were made from 21 layers of the same materials Platex used to make bras.
8. The bra clasp was invented by Mark Twain. Not specifically for bras, but for " vests, pantaloons, or other garments requiring straps". However, it is in bras that his invention is mostly used today.
9. Ever wondered why so many bras have little bows between the cups? They are a relic of sixteenth and seventeenth century stomachers, which had a ribbon on top to make it easier to remove them.
10. The most expensive bra in the world is the ‘Royal Fantasy’ bra, which was worn by Candice Swanepoel during the 2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Worth over $10 million.

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29 May: Putney Bridge

The current Putney Bridge opened on this date in 1886. Here are ten things you might not know:

1. Like many London bridges, the Putney Bridge we know today is a replacement for an earlier bridge. The first Putney Bridge was officially known as Fulham Bridge, and was opened on 29 November 1729. It was made of wood, built by Thomas Phillips to a design by architect Sir Jacob Acworth.
2. Before this, there was only one bridge across the Thames in London - London Bridge. People in Putney and Fulham who wanted to cross the river had to take a ferry. The ferry wasn't all that reliable and it wasn't unknown for the ferryman to leave his post and go drinking in a nearby pub. It was only when someone influential, Prime Minister Robert Walpole, to be exact, was inconvenienced by a ferryman being in the pub rather than with his boat, when making his way from a visit to King George I back to Parliament, that public demands for a bridge were listened to.
3. The first bridge was a toll bridge. In its early years it would bring in £1,500 per year — about £130,000 in today's money. The Prince of Wales would pay £100 a year for he and his family to cross the bridge as often as they liked. The toll was removed in 1877 when all London's bridges were taken into public ownership.
4. Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft threw herself off Putney Bridge in 1795 when she found out her partner was having an affair with an actress. She was rescued by passing boatmen, who resuscitated her. If they hadn't, she would never have married William Godwin or given birth to Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
5. The current bridge, which dates from 1886 was designed by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and is made from stone and Cornish granite. Bazalgette also designed London's sewerage system, and the bridge incorporates part of the overflow to his system. The cages under the bridge are to prevent people from getting into the sewers (though why anyone would want to is a mystery). There is a myth that the cages were used to drown criminals. This is untrue.
6. Another myth concerns the names of the areas on either bank. This story goes that there were two sisters who lived on opposite sides of the bank, who would frequently visit each other, by means of the ferry. The names come from the directions the women would give to the ferryman - one used to say, 'Full home, waterman,' while the other would say, 'Put nigh'.
7. Putney Bridge is the only bridge in Britain to have a church at each end. On the north bank is All Saints' church; on the south bank is St Mary's church, the site of the famous Putney Debates on the English constitution.
8. The current bridge was constructed by John Waddell of Edinburgh at a cost of £240,433 (£22,223,526 in today's money).
9. It is 700 feet (210m) long, 43 feet (13m) wide and carries the A219 road.
10. Putney Bridge is often said to be the starting point for the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. The race actually starts slightly upstream of the bridge, but people can get a very good view of the start from the bridge.

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28 May: George I

George I king of England (1714-27), first monarch of the House of Hanover, was born on this date in 1660.

1. He was born in Hanover on 28 May 1660. He was the eldest son of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and inherited titles and lands from his father and uncles.
2. George was the first Hanoverian King of Great Britain and Ireland. He became king of England at the age of 54, at the death of his second cousin, Queen Anne, who had no children.
3. He wasn't Queen Anne's closest relative, but thanks to the Act of Settlement 1701, Catholics couldn't inherit the throne. George was the closest relative who wasn't a Catholic. Originally, it was George's mother Sophia who was declared the heir to the British throne, but she died, aged 83, a couple of months before Anne - so the throne passed to her son.
4. George was an unpopular king from the start. On his Coronation day, there were riots in over 20 towns in England. Catholics in particular weren't happy - the Jacobites tried to depose George in favour of Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, but their attempts failed. A major reason why George wasn't liked was because he barely spoke English, at least at first, when he arrived in England. There are documents from later in his reign which show that he was proficient in English later on. He also spoke French, Latin, Italian and Dutch.
5. Another reason was the way he treated his wife. When he was 22 he married his cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, who was 16. He didn't love her - it was a marriage purely for financial gain. His mother disapproved at first, because Sophia wasn't royal enough, but she came around when she realised how much income she'd bring in. Sophia didn't want to marry him, either - she referred to him as “pig-snout” and begged not to be forced to go through with it. After the marriage, they both had affairs. Despite that, they had two children together - George Augustus and Sophia. When they were 11 and 8, the marriage was dissolved and Sophia banished to the Castle of Ahlden, never allowed to see her children again. She was imprisoned there for 33 years, until she died. Sophia may have cursed George from beyond the grave. There's a popular story that as Sophia was dying she wrote a letter to George in which she predicted he too would die within a year - and that he died within a week of opening it.
6. When George arrived in England, he brought with him 18 cooks and two women. One of them was tall and thin and the other was very fat, so they became known as ‘the Maypole’ and ‘the Elephant’. George was known to have a thing for very fat women. The ‘Elephant’ was his illegitimate half-sister Sophia von Kielmansegg, and though the Royal family always denied she was actually his mistress, the British public never believed them. The ‘Maypole’ was Melusine von der Schulenburg, who'd been a maid of honour to George's mother. There was never any doubt she was his mistress - she was his official one, and they had three daughters together.
7. George I and his son, the future George II, hated each other.
8. It was during George's reign that the powers of the monarchy began to shrink, and the political system we have now with a cabinet government led by a prime minister, began to emerge. Robert Walpole, now recognised as Britain's first de facto prime minister, came to power at this time.
9. It's hard to know what kind of person George I really was. He seemed dull and awkward in public, yet his private letters to his daughter show a different side to him - a genial and affectionate side.
10. Although he moved to England on taking the throne, he missed his home town of Hanover and made frequent visits. On one of his visits, he suffered a stroke and died, and hence became the last British monarch to be buried outside the United Kingdom. He was succeeded by his son, George II.

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May 27: Christopher Lee

Born on this date in 1922 was the actor Christopher Lee. Here are some things you may not know about him.

1. Best known for his role as Count Dracula in a string of popular Hammer Horror films, but other notable roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit film trilogy (2012–2014) (He actually dreamed of playing Gandalf, but by the time the films were made he was too old to do the Horse riding and fight scenes required), and Count Dooku in the final two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
2. He was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009.
3. Lee's mother was a famous Edwardian beauty who was painted by Sir John Lavery as well as by Oswald Birley and Olive Snell, and sculpted by Clare F. Sheridan.
4. Lee volunteered to fight for the Finnish forces during the Winter War in 1939. He was kept away from any actual fighting, but he was issued winter gear and put on guard duty a safe distance from the front lines. He later served in the Royal Air Force and intelligence services during World War II, including as an intelligence officer with the Long Range Desert Group in Northern Africa. He trained as a pilot in South Africa, but eyesight problems forced him to drop out. He eventually ended up stationed in North Africa as a Cipher Officer for No. 260 Squadron RAF. He admitted serving in Special Operations Executive but always declined to go into details. Lee could speak fluent French and German, and was moderately proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek. After the war, was seconded to the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects to help to track down Nazi war criminals.
5. Lee appeared on the cover of the 1973 Wings album Band on the Run.
6. He was a close friend of Vincent Price (also born May 27) and Peter Cushing (born May 26).
7. Lee was a classically-trained singer with a bass voice. He sings on the The Wicker Man soundtrack, performing Paul Giovanni's psych folk composition, The Tinker of Rye, the closing credits song of the 1994 horror film Funny Man, and in the superhero comedy/rock musical The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) he performs a song and dance number called Name Your Poison written by Richard O'Brien.
8. He was also a heavy metal singer, the oldest on record. He sang a duet with Fabio Lione, the lead vocalist of the Italian metal band Rhapsody of Fire, on the single The Magic of the Wizard's Dream from the Symphony of Enchanted Lands II album. In 2006, he performed a heavy metal variation of the Toreador Song from Carmen with the band Inner Terrestrials.
9. He also produced metal albums of his own - Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which was critically acclaimed and awarded with the "Spirit of Metal" award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony, and Charlemagne: The Omens of Death from which he released a single, Let Legend Mark Me as the King at the age of 90.
10. Lee is a step-cousin of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond spy novels, and a distant relative of Robert E. Lee and the astronomer John Lee.

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26 May: Rhododendrons

Today's plant is the Rhododendron, dedicated to St Augustine, whose feast day it is. How much do you know about Rhododendrons?

1. The name comes from Ancient Greek - rhódon, meaning "rose" and déndron, meaning "tree".
2. There are about a thousand different species, including Azalea plants. The smallest grow to about 10–100 cm (4–40 in) tall, and the largest can reach 30m (100 ft). Some are evergreen and others are deciduous.
3. They are mostly native to Asia but are also found in Appalachian Mountains of North America. People in Britain and Europe knew about them - Flemish botanist Charles l’Ecluse wrote about one species, the Alpine Rose (R. hirsutum) in 1656, but it was the 18th century before they were widely introduced in Britain. Some types are actually considered a pest in the UK because they out-compete native plants and are hard to control.
4. It is the national flower of Nepal, the state flower of Kashmir and several states of India. Specific species are the state flowers of US states West Virginia and Washington.
5. In Nepal, the flowers are eaten. They can be pickled, or made into juice or squash. The Nepalese add it to fish curry because they believe it will soften the fish bones. In the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, rhododendron flowers are used to make Wine.
6. Some have been used in traditional medicine, and modern studies have found the plants may have anti-inflammatory properties and be good for the liver.
7. Not all species are edible, though. Some are very toxic including Rhododendron ponticum and Rhododendron luteum (formerly Azalea pontica). Grazing animals need to be kept away from them. Grazing on Rhododendron could kill a Horse, although horses tend to avoid them if there are plenty of non-toxic plants around to eat. Even freshly made Honey from the flowers can make people ill. Symptoms include hallucinations and so the result is known as mad honey disease. There have been historical descriptions of soldiers in Ancient Greece eating honey deliberately left behind by their enemies and behaving oddly, and even dying.
8. Perhaps this is why, in the language of flowers, the Rhododendron symbolises danger and to beware.
9. In Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, "blood red" rhododendrons are associated with the title character, possibly symbolising her poisonous character.
10. A more positive representation of Rhododendrons appears in James Joyce's Ulysses, where they are connected with Leopold and Molly's early courtship: Molly says, "the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me".

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25 May: Towel Day

Towel Day was first observed on May 25, 2001, two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His fans observe this day by carrying a towel with them wherever they go. So here are some facts about towels.

1. First of all, why did Adams' fans choose towels to honour him with? A paragraph in his book provides the answer: “…a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a Toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, Compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc. etc. …What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against the odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
2. Adams wasn't the only writer to sing the praises of the towel. Mary Henrietta Kingsley, in her 1897 work Travels in West Africa, writes “What is life without a towel?”
3. Archaeologists in the Middle Ages acknowledged the importance of towels, too, when they wrote in their papers that they'd found "... closely held personal items included the ever present knife and a towel."
4. According to tradition, towels as we know them today were invented in the Turkish city of Bursa, which was capital of the Ottoman State in the 14th-century. People there started using woven linen or cotton to wrap around themselves in Turkish baths. They called these pieces of cloth Pestamel. Thanks to the knowledge of carpet weaving in the area, pestamel could be made with intricate patterns.
5. Towels with loops sticking up from the material started to appear in the 18th century. There was another word for these in Turkish - havly - which evolved in to the modern Turkish word for a towel, havlu, meaning "with loops".
6. A bath towel usually measures around 30 in × 60 in (76 cm × 152 cm), and a hand towel is smaller - about 12 in × 24 in (30 cm × 61 cm).
7. Towels are mentioned twice in the Bible, both in chapter 13 of the Gospel According to John. Shakespeare, however, never mentions towels at all.
8. Towel as a verb (ie "to towel yourself dry") was first used by Charles Dickens in 1836.
9. The phrase “throw in the towel” for giving up in a boxing match was first used in 1915. Before that, boxers would say they were "throwing up the sponge".
10. Traditionally, towels are the items most often stolen from hotel rooms. Baseball legend Yogi Berra when asked what his hotel was like, once quipped: “The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.” However, if you're planning to make off with some nice towels next time you go on holiday, beware - many of them now have radio trackers sewn into them (washable ones, of course), along with the bedsheets and bathrobes, so now, they can track you down. A resort in Hawaii reported 3,250 less towels a month had been stolen since they implemented the system.

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24th May: Spaghetti Junction

Spaghetti Junction opened on this date in 1972. Here are 10 things you might not know about Spaghetti Junction.

1. Don't bother trying to find Spaghetti Junction on a road map - you won't find it. It's a nickname. The actual name is Gravelly Hill Interchange, or junction 6 of the M6.
2. Roy Smith, a journalist from the Birmingham Evening Mail, is credited with coming up with the nickname in the 1970s. The name stuck, and even appears in the dictionary, if not on a road map.
3. Construction started in 1968 and took four years to complete.
4. The Junction covers 30 acres (121,406 m2). Or thirty Football pitches. It has five levels; 559 concrete columns, the tallest of which are 80 feet high; 13,000 tonnes of steel reinforcement; and 134,000 m3 (175,000 cubic yards) of concrete. It has two and a half miles of slip-roads, and even its own weather station.
5. It cost £10 million at the time of its construction, and today costs about £7 million a year to maintain.
6. During maintenance, blocks of concrete are cut out using jets of water rather than with physical tools. There is less vibration with this method and so less chance of damage to other sections.
7. About 210,000 cars use the junction every day.
8. Underneath the junction, the pillars had to be carefully placed so that horse drawn narrowboats could pass on the canal below. There's even a pile of dirt which has been nicknamed "the Beach" because it is within view of the canal.
9. Birmingham City University Student Union has named their official magazine after it, and in 1998 Birmingham Cathedral had a set of vestments designed which included Spaghetti Junction as seen from the air.
10. Several other countries in the world now have interchanges which are referred to as "Spaghetti Junction" including Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.

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23 May: Thomas Hood quotes

Thomas Hood, English humorist and poet, was born on 23 May 1799. Here are some of his quotes:

1. A moment's thinking is an hour in words.
2. There is even a happiness - that makes the heart afraid.
3. Frost is the greatest artist in our clime - he paints in nature and describes in rime.
4. When was ever honey made with one bee in a hive?
5. I resolved that, like the sun, as long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything.
6. To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind.
7. There's a double beauty whenever a swan Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
8. There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.
9. Lives of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn.
10. He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, Tormenting himself with his prickles.

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22 May: World Goth Day

May 22 has been World Goth Day since 2009 when BBC 6 dedicated the day to Goth rock. So what is a Goth?

1. The original, historical Goths for which the modern sub-culture is named, were a Germanic tribe, probably from Scandinavia, best known for sacking Rome in 410 CE. Like today's Goths, they suffered from stereotyping - they are often seen as savages and Barbarians - but that is how the Romans portrayed them, and they would, wouldn't they? In fact, the Goths were largely peaceful hunters and farmers, skilled in horsemanship, archery, and falconry.
2. Like any group of people, the Gothic subculture is made up of individuals with a range of musical, artistic and fashion tastes. They encompass "Uber-Goths" and "poseurs" and everything in between.
3. Goths are often associated with certain types of music. Music critic John Stickney coined the term "Gothic rock" in 1967 when describing a meeting with Jim Morrison in a dimly lit wine-cellar which he called "the perfect room to honour the Gothic rock of the Doors". Artists and bands associated with Goth culture include Velvet Underground, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Adam and the Ants, The Cure, Killing Joke and later incarnations of The Damned.
4. There are also particular genres of fiction which are described as Gothic. Elements of Gothic fiction may be mystery, romance, horror and the supernatural. Think Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft and Anne Rice. Rice's characters were depicted as tormented beings who struggled with alienation and loneliness; beautiful, but socially alienated monsters. Not unlike the stereotypical Goth, in fact.
5. John Everett Millais and John Ruskin are artists whose work might appeal to Goths. Dark colours, dark subjects, Vampires, ghosts and romance are features of Gothic art.
6. So they all wear nothing but Black, right? Actually, no. While many do, even an Uber Goth might accent black with Red or Purple, and some may even wear Pink. That said, dyed black hair, black painted fingernails Elizabethan, Victorian or medieval styles such as corsets, lace, Silver jewellery and religious imagery are common. Fashion experts have postulated that Goth fashion is a revolt against the psychedelic 70s disco fashions and the pastel colours popular in the 1980s.
7. You can even apply a Gothic style to a room by painting the walls, ceiling and furniture black, and furnish it with objects like candlesticks, death lanterns, Skulls, rosaries, crosses and plastic roses.
8. Another stereotype is that Goths are terminally depressed and suicidal, and prone to self harm. They're not. They may have a dark sense of humour, but not all of them are miserable by any means. That said, a study in the British Medical Journal did find a correlation between identifying with goth culture and self harm and attempted suicide. However, what the researchers found was that more often than not, people self harmed before they became Goths, and that becoming part of the subculture actually helped them cope better with life.
9. Nor do you have to be a sexually promiscuous devil worshipper to be a goth. Goths can be Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, or whatever faith they want. Being on drugs isn't a prerequisite either. There is no one drug associated with Goth culture. Goths, according to research, tend to be highly intelligent and creative people.
10. As well as World Goth Day, there are lots of Goth festivals. A lot of them take place in Germany, but not all of them. The Lumous Gothic Festival takes place in Finland and is the northernmost gothic festival in the world. "Deti Nochi: Chorna Rada" (Children of the night) takes place in Ukraine and the Drop Dead Festival is in the US. Closer to home, if you don't want to leave the UK, look no further than Whitby, Yorkshire, which hosts a twice-yearly Goth music festival.

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21st May: Gold

On this date in 1851, Gold was first discovered in Australia. 10 facts about gold:

1. It is the only metal which is Yellow or golden in colour. Other metals are only yellow if they have oxidised or reacted with something. The word gold itself comes from the Old English word for yellow. While on the subject of words, the Aztec word for gold, "teocuitatl," translates as "excrement of the gods."
2. The atomic number for gold is 79. Its chemical symbol is Au, which comes from the old Latin name for gold, aurum, which means "shining dawn" or "glow of sunrise". It melts at 1064.18 °C/1947.52 °F and boils at 2970 °C/5378 °F. Not much will dissolve it - anyone wanting to dissolve gold needs some stuff called aqua regia, a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.
3. It is the heaviest and densest metal in the Periodic Table - a cubic foot of gold weighs about 1,187 pounds. Yet it is extremely malleable and ductile. Pure gold is so soft it can be moulded with the hands. Malleability is a measure of how easily a material can be hammered into thin sheets - and gold can be made into extremely thin sheets - so thin they are transparent, so it can be used in astronauts' helmets to reflect infrared rays while allowing sunlight to pass through, and the windows of aircraft to help prevent ice from forming. Thin sheets of gold appear greenish blue because gold strongly reflects red and yellow. Ductile metals can be stretched into wire. An ounce of gold could be stretched into a wire 60 miles long. It can even be used as embroidery thread.
4. It's also non-toxic. It is used in medicine - liquid gold is injected into the muscles of people with rheumatoid arthritis; and it can be eaten. Some extremely expensive restaurants add gold flakes to meals. Hence gold has an E number: E175, which is suitable for consumption by vegetarians, vegans and members of all religious groups. Compounds of gold, however, can be extremely toxic.
5. The measure of the purity of gold, the carat, was originally a unit of mass based on the carob seed used by ancient merchants. 24 carat gold is pure gold. 18 carat gold is 75% pure gold; 14 carat gold is 58.5% pure gold and 10 carat gold is 41.7% pure gold.
6. Gold is surprisingly rare. Only around 160,000 tons of it have ever been mined throughout history. All the gold that has ever been mined would fit in to three Olympic sized swimming pools, or make a cube just 21 metres square. More steel is created per hour than there has been gold dug up throughout history.
7. Even so, there is gold under all seven continents on Earth. Scientists believe there is gold on Mars, Mercury and Venus, as well, and that most of the gold on Earth came from Meteorites. Only about 20% of the gold buried underground on Earth has been mined. Two thirds of that came from South Africa.
8. The best place to go mining for gold isn't a gold mine. The average gold mine produces 5g of gold per tonne of rock. If, however, you collect a tonne of old mobile phones, you could recover 150g of gold.
9. There is also a lot of gold in the sea. Wrecks of ships containing cargoes of gold notwithstanding (the USA once had a locksmith diver who did very well for himself diving down to wrecks and picking the locks on underwater safes) there is 25 tons of gold in every cubic mile of seawater. However, there is no way to economically recover it.
10. Alchemists throughout history have tried to come up with ways of turning base metals into gold. King Charles II and Isaac Newton both tried it in their day. Another person who tried was Bernard of Treves in the fifteenth century. His recipe was as follows: take 2,000 Egg yolks, mix them with equal parts of oil and vitriol and burn over a slow Fire for two weeks. However, it didn't work, and poisoned his Pigs to boot. Scientists today do know how to turn Lead into gold. It is actually possible. The nucleus of a lead atom has 82 protons. The nucleus of a gold atom has 79 protons. All you have to do is eliminate three lead protons. Easy. But don't try it at home. It can only be done with a nuclear reactor, and the gold produced would be so radioactive it would be useless anyway.

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