Material – Amazing Facts 4 u

Television

Amazing Facts 4 U — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:30:35 +0000

40 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Television | Amazing Facts 4U

Television sets receive and display broadcasts of moving images and also produce sound through speakers.
The images on a TV screen in fact refresh fast enough to appear as a smooth motion to the human eye.
In fact, the first black and white static transmission was created by the German inventor Paul Nipkow’s way back in 1884.
John Logie Baird made technological history when the first transmission of a moving human face was seen on television on 30th October 1925.
The world’s first working television system was electromechanical.
The human face that was first aired on Baird’s TV screen was his office boy, William Taynton, who the inventor paid two shillings and a sixpence per week to simply sit in front of the hot TV transmitter.
The first television set had only 30 lines of display giving a very coarse image. Currently, the digital signal of the television sends pictures with 1080 lines.
Amazingly the inventor of the television would not let his own children watch TV. He once said to his son “There’s nothing on it worthwhile”.
The First American television station started working in 1928, and BBC transmission began in 1930.
The word “television” entered the English language in 1907 coined by the Russian scientist, Constantin Persky. The abbreviation “TV” was first used in 1948.
Cable television made its debut in Canada in 1952.
Worldwide 100 million television sets were sold first time in 1960.
The first satellite TV transmission took place between France and the US in 1962.
Color television sets didn’t become widespread until the 1970s. Sales of color TVs surpassed black-and-white sets for the first time in 1972.
The first TV remote control was created in 1950 by Zenith and was connected to a television by a wire. The 1980s saw the arrival of remote controls.
Early monitors used cathode ray tubes (CRT) which have since been replaced by thinner screens that use liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma.
Similar to radio, television broadcasts are transmitted at specific frequencies.
More recently there has been a change from analog transmissions to digital. The 0’s and 1’s of a digital transmission are like the information stored in a computer, making them more reliable than traditional analog broadcasts.
Television became widely popular after the end of World War II. Over 1 million American homes had a television in 1948.
The first television commercial for Bulova watches was broadcast on July 1, 1941, in New York before a baseball game between Philadelphia and Brooklyn. It showed a watch ticking for exactly 60 seconds. The company paid only $9 for the ad. Currently, prime time TV advertising cost millions.
The first car commercial on television was for Chevrolet and aired on June 9, 1946.
The average American family watches TV for eight hours per day.
Currently, there are about 300 million television sets in the United State.
Way back in 1950, only 10 percent of U.S. households had a television. The percentage increased to an unbelievable 90% in 1960. Now 99% of American homes own at least one television set, and 66% have at least three.
In the US the first colored pictures were aired for the 1954 Tournament of the Roses Parade; however, most programs were black and white until 1955. The UK aired the first color pictures on BBC2 during Wimbledon in 1967. in color.
Most people dream in color, but those that grew up watching black and white television may often dream in black and white.
The Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) was launched for consumers in 1963 in the UK, allowing viewers to record their favorite TV shows for the very first time. The videos could record only up to 20 minutes of TV. It took another decade for the technology to become a global success.
After President Kennedy’s death in 1963, the television networks aired four days of commercial-free coverage of his funeral, burial, and other proceedings, costing them about $100 million in lost advertising revenue. About 93% of American homes watched some coverage.
Product placement is illegal on Norwegian television.
The television is on for an average of about 8 hours a day in U.S. homes.
It has been calculated that the average American child sees about 13,000 deaths on television between the ages of five and 14.
The average American child sees about 200,000 acts of violence on TV by the age of eighteen.
Liquid Crystals were in fact accidentally discovered by Friedrich Reinitzer in 1888. However, it remained a scientific curiosity for about 76 years before they were used to build liquid crystal displays (LCD) in 1964.
NASA has announced that they have lost all of their original tapes of Apollo 11’s TV transmission in August 2006.
The world’s largest LED display, the Fremont Street Experience, in Las Vegas is over 1,500 ft. long and 90 ft. high at the peak built-in 1995.
The first public digital high-definition television (HDTV or HD) broadcast was made in the United States in 1996.
Television viewers in the UK have to pay $225 for a “television license” every year as a tax to support the BBC.
During a live news broadcast in 1974, the news anchor announced “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide.” then shot and killed herself live on television.
Amazingly until 1987, there were no television broadcasts in Iceland on Thursdays.
The famous revolving globe that is utilized by the NBC news series spent many years turning in the wrong direction. In 1984 this was eventually found and now the globe is turning correctly.

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~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Oxygen

Amazing Facts 4 U — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 09:30:59 +0000

50 Amazing Oxygen Facts | Amazing Facts 4U

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe after Hydrogen and Helium.
Oxygen forms in the hearts of stars, with the fusion of a carbon-12 nucleus and a helium-4 nucleus (also known as an alpha particle).
In fact on earth, oxygen is the most common element, making up about 47% of the earth’s mass.
Oxygen is absolutely essential to human life, it is found in the air we breathe and the water we drink (H20). Humans inhale more than 6 billion tons of oxygen each year.
Cyanobacteria, which are organisms that “breathe” using photosynthesis, take in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, just like modern plants. Cyanobacteria were likely responsible for the first oxygen on Earth, an event known as the Great Oxidation Event some 2.4 billion years ago.
When oxygen first developed on Earth 2.4 billion years ago , it is believed that it wiped out nearly 99% of all life in simple forms mostly anaerobic organisms and paved the way for life as we know it today. The simplest animals only appeared around 600 million years ago.
Oxygen (O2) is unstable in our planet’s atmosphere and must be constantly replenished by photosynthesis in green plants. Without them, our atmosphere would contain almost no Oxygen.
In simple terms photosynthesis reaction is : carbon dioxide + water + sunlight → glucose + oxygen.
Green algae and cyanobacteria are believed to be responsible for the production of as much as 70% of the free oxygen found in nature.
The Amazon rain forest consumes nearly all of the oxygen it produces through photosynthesis. The main contribution of oxygen to the atmosphere comes from plankton blooms fed by run off from its forest floor.
While ground-level ozone is an air pollutant, the ozone layer in the Earth’s upper atmosphere provides protection from the suns harmful rays by filtering Ultraviolet light.
Amazingly just five elements make up over 90 percent of the weight in the Earth’s crust. Almost half of the weight of the crust comes from oxygen. The other four elements are Silicon, Aluminum, Iron and calcium.
Scientists believe that there have been times when the Earth’s oceans have become completely devoid of oxygen and understandably many creatures died.
Amazing fact is that almost two-thirds of the weight of living things comes from oxygen mainly because living things contain a lot of water and about 89 percent of water’s weight comes from oxygen.
Oxygen is found in virtually all vital bodily compounds, such as carbohydrates , proteins and fats.
At cellular level the process is reverse to photosysnthesis providing energy to cells. In simple terms the reaction is : glucose + oxygen → carbon dioxide + water + energy.
Oxygen is about two times more soluble in water than nitrogen is making it possible for living organisms to thrive in seas, lakes and rivers. The polar oceans, being coolest, hold more dissolved oxygen and therefore sustain vast amounts of aquatic life.
During the carboniferous period in earth history , due to high oxygen levels in the range of 35 % , insects would grow to amazing sizes with the largest being a 2.6 meter long millipede.
English chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestly isolated oxygen by shining sunlight on mercuric oxide and collecting the gas from the reaction. He noted that a candle burned more brightly in this gas. Findings were published in 1774, beating out Swiss scientist Carl Wilhelm Steele, who had actually isolated oxygen in 1771 but not published the work.
French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier gave the name Oxygen in the year 1777.
Oxygen gas is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
Liquid and solid oxygen are pale blues.
Oxygen gas normally is the divalent molecule O2. Ozone, O3, is another form of pure oxygen. The Atomic Number (number of protons in the nucleus) of Oxygen is 8.
It’s the most reactive of the non-metallic elements forming oxides after the reaction.
Oxygen was the atomic weight standard for the other elements until 1961 when it was replaced by carbon 12.
Dry air is 21 percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen and 1 percent other gases.
The oxygen molecule is very tough. A study found that an oxygen molecule (O2) can survive pressures 19 million times higher than atmospheric pressure.
Too much oxygen can be dangerous. Breathing 80 percent oxygen for more than 12 hours irritates the respiratory tract and can eventually cause deadly fluid build-up or edema in lungs.
Amazing fact is that Oxygen does not burn by itself! It does, however, support the combustion of other substances. If oxygen itself actually burnt, simply striking a match would be enough to burn all of the oxygen in our planet’s atmosphere in one go.
The Northern and Southern Lights , the green and dark-red colors in the sky are caused by oxygen atoms. Highly energetic electrons from the solar wind split oxygen molecules high in earth’s atmosphere into excited high energy atoms. These atoms lose energy by emitting photons, producing awe-inspiring light shows. They are usually seen in the polar regions.
Venous (oxygen deficient) blood is in fact not blue, but a dark red. The reason your veins appear blue is because of light scattering.
Because of the cornea’s need for transparency, it lacks blood vessels and oxygen must diffuse directly into cornea from air. This is why our eyes dry out in areas with low oxygen concentration.
Amazingly every mammal has an oxygen-saving reflex triggered specifically by cold water on the face. The reflex, which slows down heart rates in humans up to 25%, is only triggered by water colder than 70 °F (21 °C), and does not trigger when any other part of the body is submerged.
Horseshoe crabs’ blood carries oxygen with copper instead of iron.
Amazing fact is that liquid oxygen is magnetic, and it can be moved around and even picked up with a powerful magnet.
The reason for the lump felt in our throat when you are stressed or crying is the expanded glottis (the opening in the trachea) when we are under heavy stress for increased oxygen intake.
Nuclear submarines actually create breathable air by using an electric current to split the hydrogen and oxygen molecules of ocean water. This allows them to stay submerged for months at a time.
Oxygen therapy is used to treat emphysema, pneumonia, some heart disorders, and any disease that impairs the body’s ability to take up and use gaseous oxygen. It is also commercially produced for a wide variety of industrial uses.
Oxygen is commercially used in the production of steel, where it removes carbon-based impurities by forming carbon dioxide.
Oxygen can be liquefied at -183° C (the boiling point of oxygen) and solidified at -219° C (the melting point of oxygen). The solid form has been discovered to have enormous potential as an efficient rocket fuel, due to its superior oxidizing ability.
Amazing fact is that in aviation history hardly any life has ever been saved by emergency oxygen masks in commercial airplanes, nor has any life ever been lost due to their absence.
The Diving Bell Spider lives almost its entire life in a web that can replenish its oxygen supply by acting as a gill, drawing oxygen from the water itself.
There is a fish called “Climbing Gourami” that can exit water, breathe oxygen, climb and even walk.
Oxycyte, a perfluorocarbon which has high density of oxygen, can bypass blood clots and swollen vessels to deliver oxygen to the brain because of its smaller particle size.
If a dead body winds up in a cold humid environment that is devoid of oxygen, it will degrade into a crumbly, waxy material with the consistency of a soap.
The reason wine is stored on its side is to keep the cork moist so it doesn’t shrink and thus preventing oxygen from seeping into the bottle and ruining the wine.
Phrase “standing in the limelight’ originates from the fact that an intense light could be created from burning lime mixed with hydrogen and oxygen which was then for spotlights at the theater.
On his deathbed, Steve Jobs refused to wear his oxygen mask because he did not like the design of it
In 2003, Disney launched a short lived rental program to rent movies on self destructing DVDs which were not to be returned. The discs worked perfectly to view for a two-day window after taken out of the package. Then the exposure to oxygen turned the coating black and made the disc impenetrable by a DVD laser.
Tropicana Orange Juice is owned by Pepsico and Simply Orange is owned by Coca Cola. They strip the juice of oxygen before packaging for better storage which essentially strips the juice of its flavors. The companies then add other flavor and fragrance to make it “fresh.”

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~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Water

Amazing Facts 4 U — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 04:30:38 +0000

60 Amazing Facts About Water | Amazing Facts 4U

Amazingly it is the only natural substance found in all three physical states – Solid, liquid and Gas at the temperatures that naturally occur on Earth.
Water is made up of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Its chemical formula is H2O.
Water expands by about 9 % as it freezes.
Water is the only substance on earth that is lighter as a solid than a liquid.
Only 1% of the world’s water is drinkable.
Amazing fact is that of all the water on the earth humans can use only about three tenths of a percent of this water. Such usable water is found in groundwater aquifers, rivers, and freshwater lakes.
Amazing fact that over the course of a century, the average water molecule will spend 1 week in the atmosphere , 2 weeks in lakes and rivers , 20 months as ice and 98 years in the ocean.
Water has a very high melting and boiling point compared to other similar molecules.
Amazing thing is that if water was not a liquid at most of the temperatures we see on Earth, Life would not be possible. The seas would all be ice, there would be no rain, nothing for plants to collect and animals to drink. Our human cells would not be filled with liquid water but ice crystals.
It is called the ‘universal solvent’ because it is capable of dissolving so many substances which are essential for body functions inside the cell. Water carries chemicals, minerals, and nutrients with it.
Water has a high specific heat capacity. It means is that it takes a lot of energy to make water a little bit warmer. Seas, lakes and rivers maintain a much more constant temperature than air, which means that animals can live in water all year round without having to adapt to large temperature changes.
Amazingly there are more atoms in a single glass of water, than glasses of water in all the oceans of the Earth.
Pure water doesn’t conduct electricity very well. Most of water’s conductivity is caused by the water’s impurities in the form of dissolved salts.
Amazing fact is that salt water is 1,000 times as conductive as your average drinking water, and 1,000,000 times as conducive as highly purified water.
Water can move up narrow tubes against the force of gravity in what is known as capillary action.
Hot water will turn into ice faster than cold water.
Roughly 70 percent of an adult’s body is made up of water. At birth, water accounts for approximately 80 percent of an infant’s body weight. Human brains are 75% water. Human bones are 25% water. Human blood is 83% water.
A healthy person can drink about 11 litres (48 cups) of water per day.
A person must consume 2 litres of water daily to live healthily. Humans drink an average of 75.000 litres of water throughout their life.
Amazingly drinking too much water too quickly can lead to water intoxication. Water intoxication occurs when water dilutes the sodium level in the bloodstream and causes an imbalance of water in the brain.
Pure water has no smell and no taste. It has a neutral pH of 7, which is neither acidic nor basic.
The earth is a closed system meaning that it rarely loses or gains extra matter. Amazing fact is that the same water that existed on the earth millions of years ago is still present today. The total amount of water on the earth is about 326 million cubic miles of water.
The Amazon River flow by volume of water is bigger than the next 8 largest rivers combined.
Amazing fact is if all the water on earth is bunched up into a ball, it’s radius will be less than 700 Km.
Even though each person only requires 48 litres of water on a daily basis, individuals in the United States use an average of 500 litres, those in Canada an average of 300 litres and those in England an average of 200 litres. Since 1950, water usage in the United States has risen 125 percent.
Of all the water that enters each household, about 95% of it ends up down the drain.
The average toilet uses 6 litres of clean water in a single flush.
By the time a person feels thirsty, his or her body has lost over 1 percent of its total water amount.
The weight a person loses directly after intense physical activity is weight from water, not fat.
In the World over 1.5 billion people do not have access to clean, safe water.
On average, women in Africa and Asia have to walk 3.7 miles to collect water.
80% of all illness in the developing world comes from water born diseases. 3.4 million people die each year from water-related causes.
Water boils at 100 °C (212 °F), this is at the normal conditions at sea level. The boiling point of water actually changes relative to the barometric pressure. It boils amazingly at just 68 °C (154 °F) on the top of Mount Everest.
Amazingly groundwater can take a human lifetime just to traverse a single mile.
It doesn’t take much salt to make water “salty.” Water tastes salty with salt just one-thousandth of the weight of water.
On average, every kilogram of seawater contains around 35 grams of dissolved salt.
Amazingly it takes 1900 litres of water to make 1 kg of rice.
Amazing fact is that it takes 450 litres of water to produce one egg.
Manufacturing one car amazingly requires about 148,000 litres of water.
About 25,000 litres of water is required to grow a day’s food for a family of four.
It takes about 140 litres of water to grow the coffee beans and process them to make one cup of coffee. It takes more than 35 litres of water to produce one slice of wheat bread.
Amazingly the sun evaporates a trillion tons of water each day.
Coconut water is isotonic and sterile if the husk is intact. For this reason, in undeveloped countries it has been injected directly into the blood stream as a substitute for an IV bag.
There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America with roughly one foot of water.
About 3.6 Million people die each year from a water related disease mainly diarrhea.
Just simple washing hands can decrease the chance of diarrhea by around 35%.
Amazing fact is that extremely high pressured water can cut through a steel beam.
Most of the smoke billowing up from a space shuttle launch is not exhaust. It is water vapour from the pool of water under the shuttle designed to absorb the acoustic shock waves that could otherwise tear the shuttle apart.
An elephant can smell water up to 5 km away.
Rat can last the longest without water among animals.
Penguins can drink salt water because they have a supra orbital gland, which lets them filtrate the salt from the water.
New York City water supply system leaks on average 75 million litres a day. Specialized divers live underwater in a pressurized tank for over a month to try to repair these leaks.
There’s a geyser in Nevada that’s been spewing water continuously since someone drilled a well 50 years ago.
Amazingly in 2011, the city of Portland, Oregon discarded 7.8 million gallons of drinking water, not because of the dead animals regularly found in the drinking supply but because a drunk 21-year-old peed in it.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers that shoot large jets of water vapor into space and according to NASA it is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it.
U.S. and Russian astronauts on the International Space Station have separate water supplies. While the U.S. water uses iodine for bacteria control, the Russian water uses silver. If these substances mix, a silver-iodine precipitate forms in the water, which may clog the sublimator in the NASA EMU spacesuit.
In 1936, the Russians made a computer that ran on water.
After WWII, a group of Jewish extremists formulated a Holocaust-revenge plan to kill 6 million German citizens by poisoning the water supply of Munich, Berlin, Weimar, Nuremberg and Hamburg. However, it was foiled by British police while the poison was in transit to Germany.
Set in the desert of Dubai, the Tiger Woods Golf Course uses 15 million litres of water every day to maintain its lush appearance.
During the Mongol empire in India, people never washed their clothes or themselves because they believed washing would pollute the water and anger the dragons that controlled the water cycle.

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Ice

Amazing Facts 4 U — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:30:10 +0000

40 Amazing Facts You may not know About Ice | Amazing Facts 4U

The solid occupies a greater volume of space then an equal amount of the liquid form (About 1/9 more space). That is why ice is less dense than water & floats in water.
As the solid ice takes more space, water in our pipe will cause them to burst if they freeze.
As ice floats, lakes freeze from the top down to the bottom. This is clearly important for animals that live on ice, as their habitats would be greatly reduced or not exist at all if ice sank . The wildlife survive in ponds over winter.
Amazingly the water at the bottom of the deepest oceans is actually -4 degrees Celsius. It is still liquid because water has to expand to form ice. The water at the bottom of the ocean, crushed under all that water pressure, can’t expand to form ice crystals, even though it’s very cold.
There are actually sixteen types of ice discovered by scientists. Ice IV is the ice we find in the freezer. Difference lies in the structures of the crystals in them. e.g. Ice XI exhibits electric polarization which can be manipulated and reversed. Ice V has the most complicated crystalline structure. Ice III is actually denser than water and would actually sink in water.
One type called just amorphous ice has no crystalline structure and is the type of ice most often found in space also known as “glassy ice.” On earth, glassy ice can only form when water is rapidly cooled to -137C.
Amazing fact is that Mars has polar snowstorms of dry ice snowflakes. These snowflakes are microscopic being the size of human red blood cells.
Pykrete is a mixture of 86 percent ice with 14 percent wood pulp. The pulp reinforces the naturally brittle ice, resulting in an extremely resilient but temporary- substance. The British military considered the viability of building warships out of such substances during World War II but it was found to be unviable.
The snow is a good insulator and can keep things warm.
Amazingly the hardness of hard ice is as much as that of concrete.
Ice crystals can take on any shape or form and these are only limited by one’s imagination.
In fact you can start a fire with ice.
Amazingly Eskimos have over 100 words for ice.
If you could throw a snowball fast enough, it would totally vaporize when it hit a brick wall.
Ice looks cloudy due to tiny, trapped air bubbles inside which refract the light. This is particularly true in home-made ice cubes.
For perfectly clear ice, use bottled water, boil it briefly to drive out any air and freeze it in the pan you’ve boiled it in to avoid incorporating any air.
Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide resembling snow and it’s very cold about -78 degrees Celsius. Unlike water, carbon dioxide does not go though a liquid stage as it cools from a gas stage to a solid stage. Dry ice also doesn’t melt. It changes directly from solid into a vapor or gaseous form. This change is called sublimation.
Amazingly at a thickness of two inches, Ice will support a man. At a thickness of ten inches, will support 1,000 pounds per square ft.
Ice is not slippery. Thin layer of ice melts under pressure and this wet layer on top of ice is slippery allowing you to skate smoothly.
Amazingly the average ice berg weighs 20 Million tons.
As an iceberg melts , it makes a fizzing sound due to compressed air bubbles being released.
When the Antarctic sea-ice begins to expand at the beginning of winter, it advances by around 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) per day, and eventually doubles the size of Antarctica, adding up to an extra 20 million square kilometres of ice around the land mass.
There is no ice covering Iceland.
There are few places in the world– Quebec City and Jukasjaarvi, Sweden among them, where you can stay in a hotel made of ice. One temporary Igloo hotel built in Sweden every year has a capacity to sleep 100 people.
Permanent snow and ice cover about 12% (21 million square km’s) of the Earth’s land surface. 80% of the world’s fresh water is locked up as ice or snow.
Amazing fact is that a single snowstorm can drop 40 million tons of snow, carrying the energy equivalent to 120 atom bombs.
The most snow produced in a single snowstorm is 4.8 meters (15.75ft) at Mt Shasta Ski Bowl, California (USA) between 13 and 19 February 1959
Amazing Fact is that three quarters of the fresh water in the entire world is contained in glaciers. The seasonal glacial runoff is an incredibly important source of fresh water on earth.
The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 80% of that land mass At the bottom of it, miles below the surface, there is ice that froze over a hundred thousand years ago. Scientists have extracted core samples of the ice from there. It contains a record of climate change all throughout history also using air samples trapped inside the ice which gives information about the temperatures and greenhouse gas levels of past hundreds of centuries.
Amazing fact is that if the Antarctic ice cap melted, it is estimated that the world sea level could rise by an average of 180 feet (55 metres). This rise is not just because of melting but due to warmer water occupying more space.
Sea ice is important to regulating global temperature, because the white, bright ice reflects back 80% of the light that hits it and helps to keep the ocean cool.
Algae grow between the cracks in sea ice and even on the underside of the ice, providing food for tiny shrimp-like krill throughout the dark, cold arctic winter.
Amazingly the Saturn rings are made up of millions of ice crystals, some as big as houses and others as small as specks of dust.
The largest piece of ice to fall to earth was an ice block 6 meters (20 ft) across that fell in Scotland on 13 August 1849.
Antarctica is the best place to find meteorites. Dark meteorites show up against the white expanse of ice and snow and don’t get covered by vegetation.
The largest hailstone recorded fell on 14 April 1986 in Bangladesh weighing 1kg (2.25lbs). The hailstorm reportedly killed 92 people.
The greatest snowfall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
Amazing fact discovered is that nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
Most snowflakes form with 6 tips or branches. Generally, the colder it is when the snowflake is formed the sharper and more defined the tips will be.
It has been reported that Niagra falls on the 30th of March, 1847 froze. The six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute ceased to flow. People even dared to ride in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore.

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Diamond

Amazing Facts 4 U — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:30:27 +0000

50 Amazing Facts about Diamond | Amazing Facts 4U

The word “Diamond” comes from the Greek word “Adamas” and means “unconquerable and indestructible”.
The weight of a diamond is measured in carats. A carat is a fifth of a gram.
A fact is a man first discovered diamonds first only 4,000 years ago in the riverbeds of the Golconda region of India.
Diamonds were not originally mine. They were actually found alongside or at the bottom of rivers in India.
Amazingly until the 18th century, diamond mines were only found in India.
Just as India’s production was dwindling, diamonds were discovered in Brazil in 1725 and in South Africa in the 19th Century.
The top three diamond mines in the world are Botswana (24 million carats), Russia (17.8 million carats), and Canada (10.9 million carats).
Even though the U.S. produces almost no diamonds, America buys more than 40 percent of the world’s gem-quality diamonds, making it the world’s largest diamond market.
The fact is eighty percent of diamonds mined today are used in industry for cutting, polishing, or grinding. Only 20% of diamonds are used for jewelry.
Diamonds are made of pure carbon.
Most diamonds found in nature are between one to three billion years old.
Diamonds are created by the combination of tremendous pressure and temperatures of 2000º –3000º F at depths between 75 and 120 miles beneath the earth’s surface. Diamonds are carried to the surface by volcanic eruptions.
In their pure state, diamonds are colorless. Yellow and brown are the most common colored diamonds. Blue and red are the rarest colored diamonds.
There are over 16,000 different classifications of diamonds.
Diamonds used to be the Hardest Substance on Earth but in 2005 scientists have manufactured a harder substance called hyper diamond which is 11 % harder.
Diamond has a hardness of 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, with 1 being the softest (talc) and 10 being the hardest.
Only a diamond cuts another diamond.
The amazing fact is that diamonds are brittle in spite of their hardness. If hit hard with a hammer, a diamond will shatter or splinter.
Diamonds have a very large melting point of 3547′ C( 6420′ F)
Diamonds have a boiling point of 4827′ C( 8720′ F).
Amazingly diamonds are dense enough to slow the speed of light traveling through them by more than half.
To produce a single one-carat diamond, 250 tons of earth must be mined.
For every 1,000 polished diamonds, only one weighs more than one carat.
The Diamond Cartel run by De Beers controls about 60 to 75% of the world’s diamond trade.
Diamond is the best known thermal conductor (heat transfer) among naturally occurring substances.
If you put a diamond on your tongue, your tongue will start to get cooler because diamond sucks all of the heat from your tongue.
Ancient Chinese used diamonds to polish ceremonial burial axes in the late stone age or over 4,500 years ago.
Amazingly a law in Thirteenth-century France decreed that only the King could wear diamonds.
The amazing fact is that in 2004, scientists have discovered a diamond star that is 10 billion trillion trillion carats! The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
The world’s largest diamond was the Cullinan, found in South Africa in 1905. It weighed 3,106.75 carats uncut. It was cut into the Great Star of Africa, weighing 530.2 carats, the Lesser Star of Africa, which weighs 317.40 carats, and 104 other diamonds of nearly flawless color and clarity. They now form part of the British crown jewels.
Cullinan, the world’s largest diamond was big enough to create about 2,600 average-sized engagement rings when it was dug up in 1905.
The amazing fact is that when the world’s largest diamond was discovered in South Africa, it was shipped to England on a steamboat under heavy security. But it was a diversion, and the real stone was sent in a plain box via post.
In the past decade, scientists have perfected a technique called Chemical Vapor Deposition, where carbon gas cloud is passed over diamond seeds in a vacuum chamber heated to more than 1,800 degrees. In a matter of days, they are now able to “grow” diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from natural ones.
The amazing fact is that candle flames contain millions of tiny diamonds. It has been revealed that around 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles are created every second in a candle flame as it burns. Unfortunately, these particles are burned away and converted to carbon dioxide.
Amazingly the Mir diamond mine of Serbia, Russia is so large that it creates air currents strong enough to suck a helicopter into it.
The perpetrators of the “Diamond Heist of the Century”, the Antwerp Diamond Heist of February 2003, amazingly got past 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations and to this day no one knows how. Thieves broke into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry.
The Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas is the only place in the USA where you can find naturally occurring diamonds. It is open to the public, and you can keep any diamond you find, regardless of the size.
Howard Hall was an American who primarily developed the synthetic diamond process for GE, making them untold millions. The first synthetic diamond was made in 1954. Amazingly he was given just a $10 bond as a bonus for his effort in addition to his regular salary.
A financial institution in Dubai offers an amazing diamond-studded credit card.
The synthesized material known as cubic zirconia is a crystalline form of zirconium dioxide (ZrO2). It is at times in competition with diamond because as well as being hard, optically flawless and colorless, it is also durable and cheap.
Chocolate Diamonds are in fact nothing more than unwanted diamonds just marketed well.
A Moon-sized diamond was found in space, and it has been named “Lucy” in reference to the Beatles’ song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
Uranus and Neptune may literally rain diamonds, which then pile up miles thick and those aren’t the only diamonds being produced in space.
Diamonds are not rare or valuable and the reason demand is high is because of a marketing campaign by DeBeers holding a monopoly to sell more engagement rings.
Hope diamond has a reputation for its successive owners dying of unnatural causes. It also glows red after being exposed to UV light, fueling its cursed reputation.
In 2012, an all diamond ring was created by a Swiss jeweler, weighing in at 150 karats and costing $70 million.
When the vaults of a temple in Trivandrum India were opened after many centuries, they were found to be full of precious gold, diamonds, and rubies worth $40 billion.
There are at least 10 gems rarer than diamonds and some of them will change color depending on the light you see them in.
The Eureka Diamond, a 21.25 carat diamond from South Africa, was first used as a toy by a 15-year-old boy before it was given away to his neighbor when the neighbor offered to buy it.
Under extremely high pressure, diamonds can amazingly be made from peanut butter.

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~ By Amazing Facts 4U Team

Gold

Amazing Facts 4 U — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 09:30:49 +0000

60 Amazing Facts about Gold You Probably Didn’t Know | Amazing Facts 4U

Gold is one investment that doesn’t lose its value unlike fiat currencies printed out of thin air backed just by an assurance from the federal government in our world with looming currency and debt crisis.
Traditionally, investors try to preserve their assets during hard economic times by investing in precious metals, such as gold and silver.
The word Gold is derived from the Old English word Gelo meaning yellow. The element symbol for gold is Au which comes from the old Latin name for gold, aurum, which means “shining dawn” or “glow of sunrise”.
The amazing fact is that nearly all of the gold on Earth that is mined came from meteorites that bombarded the planet over 200 million years after the earth was formed.
The vast majority of Earth’s gold and platinum is found in its core. The reason these elements are so rare on the surface is that they mostly sunk to the core when the planet was molten.
It is believed that there’s enough gold in Earth’s core to coat its surface in 1.5 feet of Gold.
Amazingly the oldest worked gold objects were made as early as 6000 BC. You will find more than 400 references of gold in the bible.
A gold pendant was found in Thessaly dating from around 6000-5300 BC.
In 560 B.C., the Lydians introduced the first gold coin, which was actually a naturally occurring amalgam of gold and silver called electrum.
When the Lydians were captured by the Persians in 546 B.C., the use of gold coins began to spread.
Gold is the only metal that is yellow or “golden”. Other metals may develop a yellowish color, but only after some chemical reaction.
In fact, Gold and Copper are the only two non-white metals.
The amazing fact is absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
High purity metallic gold is odorless and tasteless since the metal is unreactive.
The amazing fact is Gold never erodes. Very few chemicals can attack gold, so that’s why it keeps it shine even when buried for thousands of years.
While acids dissolve most metals, a special mixture of acids called aqua regia is required to dissolve gold.
Amazingly at one time in fact aluminum used to be more valuable than gold! Aluminum used to be one of the most expensive metals in the world. Only the wealthiest ate with aluminum utensils, while lesser nobility ate with gold.
Malleability is a measure of how easily a material can be hammered into thin sheets. Gold is the most malleable element. A single ounce of gold can be beaten out into a sheet that is 300 square feet.
A sheet of gold can be made thin enough to be transparent. Very thin sheets of gold may appear greenish blue because gold strongly reflects red and yellow.
24 karat gold is pure elemental gold. 18 karat gold is 75% pure gold. 14 karat gold is 58.5% pure gold. The remaining portion of the metal usually is silver, but may consist of other metals or a combination of metals, such as platinum, copper, palladium, zinc, nickel, iron, and cadmium, etc.
Worldwide about 60 % of gold mined is used for making jewelry. Being inert Gold does not cause skin irritation. If gold jewelry irritates the skin, it is likely that the gold was mixed with some other metal.
Gold is relatively heavy. In fact one cubic foot of gold weighs half a ton.
75 % of all gold in circulation has in fact been extracted since 1910.
At least 15% of annual gold consumption is recycled each year. That means you could have ancient Egyptian gold in your dental filling!
Gold is edible without any harm. Our bodies contain about 0.2 milligrams of gold, most of it in our blood.
The visors of astronauts’ space helmets receive an amazing coating of gold so thin (0.00005 millimeters, or 0.000002 inches) that it is transparent. Even this thin layer reduces glare and heat from sunlight.
An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long. Amazingly the resulting wire would be only 5 microns wide.
The amazing fact is that if all of the existing gold in the world was to be turned into 5-micron wire, it could wrap around the planet about million times.
Amazingly it is rarer to find a one-ounce nugget of gold than a five-carat diamond.
The temperature of the human body is 37 degrees centigrade. Because of gold’s unique conductivity, gold jewelry rapidly matches your body’s heat, becoming part of you.
Gold melts at 1064 degrees centigrade and only boils at 2808 degrees centigrade.
It can conduct both heat and electricity and it never rusts.
The world’s largest gold bar weighs 250 kg (551 lb).
Gold thread can be used as embroidery thread.
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made from threads of beaten gold up to 500 threads per inch of cloth.
One cubic mile of seawater amazingly contains about 50 pounds of gold. The fact is if all the Gold sitting in the oceans were mined, each of us would get 20 kg each.
More gold is recoverable from a ton of personal computers than from 17 tons of gold ore.
In Olympics, so-called Gold Medal in fact only contain 6 grams of gold. The last time Olympic gold medals were entire of gold was in 1912.
Do you know that over 6 milligrams of gold are lost every year from a Wedding Ring just by wearing it?
The amazing fact is that only approximately 142,000 tons of gold have mined throughout history which if melted, makes a cube measuring approximately 25 x 25 x 25 meters. Gold is so rare that the world pours more steel in an hour than it has poured gold since the beginning of recorded history.
The value of all the gold in the world is about $1000 for each person on the planet.
Gold leaf may be only 0.18 microns (seven-millionths of an inch) thick; a stack of 7,055 sheets would be no thicker than a dime.
The “Welcome Stranger,” the largest gold nugget ever recorded, was found in Victoria, Australia, in 1869. It weighed 78 kilograms and dimensions were 25 by 10 inches. When it was melted down, it produced 71 kilograms of pure gold. The amazing fact is that it was found just 2 inches below the ground.
Gold mines of South Africa can descend up to 12000 Ft and a temperature of 54 Degree Centigrade.
In South Africa, 70 million tons of earth are raised and milled to extract 500 tons of Gold.
In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt outlawed US citizens from hoarding Gold. Owning Gold attracted penalty of $ 10000 and/or ten years in prison. Before that, the U.S. mint made $2.50, $10, and $15 coins of solid gold.
The value of gold has been used as the standard for many currencies. After WWII, the United States created the Bretton Woods System, which set the value of the U.S. dollar to 1/35th of a troy ounce (888.671 mg) of gold.
The U.S. assured the world that enough gold would be kept to cover printed money if the dollar is made world reserve currency. The U.S. abandoned this in 1971 after the Vietnam war breaking the promise and paving the way for unlimited money printing out of thin air taking huge advantage of the dollar being a world currency.
Ice cream taste-testers in fact eat with golden spoons! Eating on gold allows the tester to taste the product 100% without being influenced by a metal aftertaste, common with most spoon metals.
Gold has many uses, aside from its monetary and symbolic value. It is used in electronics, electrical wiring, dentistry, electronics, medicine, radiation shielding, and in the color glass.
In 1955, someone accidentally dropped more than a 600-year-old plaster Buddha statue in Bangkok, Thailand to discover the plaster was actually covering a solid gold statue.
Wladimir Klitschko auctioned off his 1996 Olympic gold medal in March 2012 for charity. The buyer paid $1 million, but immediately returned it because he wanted it to stay in the family.
Canada has minted a $300 Gold Coin.
Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. After the war, the gold was recast into medals and again presented to Laue and Franck.
Gaius Gracchus, the ancient Roman politician, had a bounty put on his head to the price of the head’s weight in gold. Although the head was delivered, the prize was never paid, as it was discovered that Gaius’ captor had emptied out his brain and replaced it with molten lead.
It was common for sailors to wear gold earrings so that in the event of their death and the body washing up on shore, the earring would serve as payment for a “proper Christian burial”.
In 1992, a man looking for his hammer with a metal detector found one of the largest hoards of Roman gold and silver ever found in Britain.
There are ATMs in Dubai that dispense gold bars.
Indian citizens buy so much gold that the Indian government owns officially only 360 metric tons, while private gold holdings since generations are estimated to be more than 30,000 metric tons.
Tiny spheres of gold are used by the Amersham Corporation of Illinois as a way to tag specific proteins to identify their function in the human body for the treatment of disease.

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