Oceans are the greatest single reservoir of gold at Earth's surface, containing approximately eight times the total quantity of gold mined to date. However, the current cost of extracting it is more than the gold is worth.

The original story of El Dorado--"the gilded one"--described a ritual in which the chief of the Andean Muisca nation, covered in gold dust, made offerings of gold into a mountain lake. Spanish conquistadores of the 1530s were gripped by the story; eventually it turned into the legend of a lost city of gold.

Gold nuggets are solid lumps of gold. Nuggets are rare, making up less than 2 percent of all native gold ever mined.

For the Inka and other peoples of the Andean region of South America, gold was the "sweat of the sun," the most sacred of all deities.

Today, India is the world's largest consumer of gold. South Asian jewellery is generally of higher purity than western jewellery--22 karats, compared to 14 karats.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds the world's largest accumulation of monetary gold. The vault is 25 meters (80 feet) beneath the street and holds $147 billion worth of gold bullion. The bedrock of Manhattan is strong enough to support the weight of the vault, its door, and the gold inside.

Eucalyptus roots can reach depths of up to 130 feet underground in search of water. Because gold deposits are found in water and underground, the Eucalyptus tree absorb microscopic gold particles, which are then transferred to the leaves via photosynthesis.

Almost all of the gold discovered today did not originate on Earth. Instead, it came from meteorites that hit our planet 200 million years after it was formed.

A careful examination of the Sun's spectrum reveals that about 6 ten-billionths (0.0000000006) of the mass of the Sun consists of gold atoms.

Pure gold is so ductile (translation: stretchy), a single ounce of it can be drawn out into a thread 50 miles long without breaking (at which point it also would be too thin to see). If you did this to all of the existing gold in the world, it would wrap around the earth 11 million times.

A naturally yellow element, gold changes colour when it is mixed with other metals, which also gives it added strength. White gold contains nickel or palladium. Rose gold gets its hue from copper. There’s even green gold, which has silver and sometimes zinc or cadmium. To determine how much gold is in any piece, divide the karat content by 24 and multiply by 100. The resulting percentage is the amount that is gold.