There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James translation of the Bible.

Isaac Newton spent considerable time and effort seeking the philosopher’s stone, hoping, with its help, to make gold.

“”Tissue paper”” gets its name from its original use: It was designed for placing between the folds of extremely fine gold-woven fabric, or “”gold tissue.””

The amount of gold dissolved in the oceans is estimated at nearly 9 million tons, about 180 times the total amount of gold dug out of mines in the entire history of humanity. The gold in the oceans is too diffuse to be extractable at a profit.

The Egyptians were crippling their own economy when they buried quantities of gold and silver with their dead leaders, presumably to be used in the afterlife. (Paper money did not exist.) Grave robbers, whatever their motives, served to keep the wheels of Egyptian society turning by restoring the gold and silver to circulation.

The British tea tax of 3 pence per pound that led to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 was actually a lower tax than the colonists had been paying. But they preferred to smuggle Dutch tea rather than pay any tax to the British, even though British tea still cost less than untaxed Dutch tea. John Hancock, one of the most prominent smugglers, had attacked the tax as a forerunner of many more taxes and the colonists bought his argument.

Navajo Indians are far more numerous today than they were in the past. Also, they occupy, more or less exclusively, far more land.

The suicide rate among American Indian teens is about 10 times the U.S. average.

One of the causes of the Maccabean rebellion of 166 B.C. was the fact that the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, constructed in Jerusalem a gymnasium – “”a place for exercise in the nude.”” The Jews were deeply shocked at the sight of open nudity.