Olympic updates, Simone Biles pulls out of team finals, What is the dumbest argument you’ve had with your significant other?, birthdays and more!
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: How Much Is An Olympic Gold Medal Worth?
The Olympics are underway now, with every athlete there striving to “bring home the gold” (as in gold medals). But, have you ever wondered: just how much is an Olympic gold medal really worth?
If the International Olympic Committee were still giving out solid gold medals to 1st-place finishers, those medals would be pretty dang valuable. But, after the 1912 Olympic Games, they substituted silver medals coated in gold. So, any Olympian today who might decide they want to melt their medal down & sell it for scrap isn’t going to earn as much as they might have back in the day.
The gold medals for this year’s Tokyo Olympics are made up of about 6 grams of gold on top of about 550 grams of pure silver. Like stock prices, gold & silver rates fluctuate pretty frequently. So, each medal’s value isn’t really set in stone. But, ballpark, it sits somewhere above $800. The online site Bustle estimated it at $830 back on July 13th, while another site, the National Post, said it was closer to $810 on July 19th. A silver medal, which is just 550 grams of pure silver, sits at $462, while the bronze medals, which are mostly copper & a bit of zinc, are only worth a few bucks.
But Olympic gold medals can be worth much more than just what they’re made of, and several athletes have sold theirs for far more than a measly $800. Back in 2010, Mark Wells, a member of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” US hockey team, sold his gold medal to a private collector, who then auctioned it off for almost $311,000. Then, four years later, Mark Wells’s teammate, Mark Pavelich, scored $262,900 for his medal. And then, there are some medals that find their way onto the auction circuit way after their original owners have passed. For instance: in 2013, one of Jesse Owens’s gold medals from the 1936 Berlin Olympics sold for about $1.47 million.
So, if you can ever manage to snag one those Olympic gold medals, you may have a literal gold mine on your hands (albeit not solid gold).
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning
WFRE PODCAST 23: Cuckoo Puffs, Cut Burgers, and More Cauliflower
Quick update from the gang. Pat failed, Laura rocked up Roy Rogers, and Gabby has some misplaced beef with cauliflower.
Laura-ism: “You hit the nail on the coffin.”
Featuring: Gabby (Weekdays 10a-3p), Laura (Weekdays 7p-Midnight), and Patrick Hanes (Midnight-5a).
Brunswick Police Officer Eyler
This week Tom met with Brunswick Police Officer Eyler. Born and raised in the Frederick area, Officer Eyler shares his hobbies, and the pretty cool location his son is stationed in the Army.
Wake-Up Crew- July 26, 2021
What happened over the weekend, Olympics, Ridiculous news, birthdays, and more!
House of the Week – 07/23/21
Rejection Hotlines Are Back
You know that awkward moment when you’re out with some friends and a stranger asks you for your phone number but you’re not interested? Before it get’s creepy just keep these rejection hotlines in mind.
- 1-951-262-3062: You’ll get a recorded message from Santa Claus
- 1-618-625-8313: This number gets you message from Stranger Things’ Murray Bauman
- 719-26-OATES: It’s the Callin’ Oates hotline, where you can listen to a Hall & Oates song
- 1-888-447-5594: This number gives you a secret Easter egg number for finishing the video game God of War
Wake-Up Crew – July 22, 2021
Topic- Was your husband a groom-zilla?? Touch a truck tonight! Sports highlights, olympics and more!
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Standard Paper Is 8.5″x11″
It’s always a good idea to keep reams of paper on hand wherever you may be working, whether it be your home or your office. But have you ever wondered why the standard paper size is 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long?
In the early days of paper production, the Dutch pioneered a technique whereby workers dipped wooden paper molds into vats of pulp & water. Then, once they dried…voila! You got paper!
After some trial & error, they settled on a standard frame size of 44 inches long to accommodate the laborers’ outstretched arms. And, when you divided that by four, it resulted in a paper size of 11 inches.
The width backstory is a bit less clear, however. It could’ve been that the Dutch allowed for 17 inches on the mold to make room for watermarks (which were regularly used at the time). So, cutting those in half meant paper ended up being 8.5 inches.
But with people using typewriters, copiers, printers, etc., it didn’t make a lot of sense for there to be so many paper sizes. Paper needed to be one-size-fits-all. And paper that was 8.5 inches by 11 inches allowed for 65 to 78 characters per 6.5 inches of type (which is what you get after you subtract the 1-inch margins).
This size became more prevalent when American Presidents Herbert Hoover (in the 1920s) & Ronald Reagan (in the 1980s) each mandated those dimensions be used for all government forms.
But 14 inches is also a standardized paper length, with those extra 3 inches believed to have come from lawyers who needed more room for verbose legal documents. That’s why 14″ paper is often called “legal-size paper”. This particular sized paper has also gotten more & more popular amongst restaurants, where the additional space is helpful when listing a long list of menu items.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning
Wake-Up Crew- July 21, 2021
Did you damage your parents house as a child? How did you cover it up? Olympics, Wake Up Whiz, Birthdays, and more!