What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 1st October

Welcome to another week!

It's Fresh week at Cloud 9 this week with the event set for Thursday night at the Midland Hotel in Manchester and we have around 300 guests all eager to see if their nominations have turned to Gold, Silver or Bronze at the event.

With precious metals being so featured this week, we thought it would make a fitting theme for the week ahead...

Most of the country are still on a semi Olympic and Paralympic high and quite rightly so - what a summer. It might have been wet, it might have been short and it might have been slow to get started, but with the Jubilee and Summer of Sport, there has never been a better time to get well and truly embossed!

But just how much do you know about the glittering gold, the shiny silver or the beautiful bronze? We thought we were reasonably well informed here at Cloud 9 Towers, but a bit of time on Google and its amazing what you an uncover..so here goes, and of course we start with Gold.....and some rather fascinating facts -

Gold is so rare that the world pours more steel in an hour than it has poured gold since the beginning of recorded history and its has been discovered on every continent on earth. Gold is so pliable that it can be made into sewing thread. An ounce of gold can be stretched over 50 miles.

Gold is edible and during the fourteenth century, drinking molten gold and crushed emeralds was used as a treatment for the bubonic plaque. Yuk!

 

The San Francisco 49ers are named after the 1849 Gold Rush miners and the story is that Gold and Copper were the first metals to be discovered by humans around 5000 B.C. The world’s largest stockpile of gold can be found five stories underground inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s vault and it holds 25% of the world's gold reserve (540,000 gold bars). While it contains more gold than Fort Knox, most of it belongs to foreign governments.

 And now to Silver, which is the metal of the moon - apparently!  The name of Silver originated from an Old Anglo Saxon word "seolfor" and it has been used as monetary coins since 700 BC. Silver iodine has been used to in attempts to seed clouds to produce rain and whilst most mirrors are backed with aluminium, for a superior quality finish, silver is used because of its high quality reflective qualities.

Legend has it that silver is a strong deterrent for supernatural beings such as werewolves and vampires and in ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe, silver was often more valuable than gold. In fact,  The Lone Ranger's bullets were made of silver (or so the masked man claimed), and his horse was called Silver !

And now to Bronze. Yes, we all think of the Bronze age, but is there a little more to this metal other than a third placed perception?

Consisting mainly of copper and tin, Bronze is a great quiz question to slip in at your next pub quiz as it has no chemical symbol and its composition makes it especially suitable for use in boat and ship fittings, especially ship propellers and submerged bearings. There us something you didn't know!

Bronze is the preferred metal for top-quality bells and also nearly all professional cymbals are made from bronze alloy. 

Think about that the next time you see a Cadbury's Gorilla or Phil Collins doing their bit!

Trophies of course play a big part of any awards event and perhaps the most famous trophy of them all is the Oscar. So to end the week, here are 10 things to know about the famous statuette!

1. The original design of Oscar was by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons. He came up with a statuette of a knight standing on a reel of film gripping a crusader’s sword. The Academy commissioned the Los Angeles sculptor George Stanley to create the design in three dimensions.

2. It was presented for the first time at the initial awards banquet on May 16, 1929 to Emil Jannings, named Best Actor for his performances in “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh”.

3. Since then, 2,701 statuettes have been presented.

4. The new golden statuettes are cast, moulded, polished and buffed each January by RS Owens & Company, the Chicago-based awards manufacturer retained by the Academy since 1982.

5. Oscar stands 13½ inches tall and weighs 8½ lbs.

6. The film reel features five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. Although the statuette remains true to its original design, the size of the base varied until 1945, when the current standard was adopted.

7. Officially named the Academy Award of Merit, the statuette is better known by its nickname, Oscar. While the origins of the moniker are not clear, a popular story has it that upon seeing the trophy for the first time, Academy librarian (and eventual executive director) Margaret Herrick remarked that it resembled her Uncle Oscar. The Academy didn’t adopt the nickname officially until 1939.

8. The statuettes presented at the initial ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze. Within a few years the bronze was abandoned in favour of Britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy which is then plated in copper, nickel silver, and finally, 24-carat gold.

9. Due to a metal shortage during the Second World War, Oscars were made of painted plaster for three years. Following the war, the Academy invited recipients to redeem the plaster figures for gold-plated metal ones.

10. The Academy is not certain how many statuettes it will hand out until the envelopes are opened on the night of the ceremony. Although the number of categories are known in advance, the possibility of ties and of multiple recipients sharing the prize in some categories makes it impossible to predict the exact number of statuettes to be awarded. Any surplus awards are housed in the Academy’s vault until the following year's event.

So there you go!

Enjoy the week ahead and don't forget to book for the CIPR Northern Conference, 31st October in Leeds.