Gogra River See Ghaghara River
Goibniu Vg6v y -n y ii\ Ancient Celtic blacksmith god. In Irish tradition he was one of a trio of divine craftsmen. He had the gift of brewing an ale that bestowed immortality and was the provider of the sacred otherworld feast, the Fled Goibnenn. In Christian times, as Gobban Saer, he was a legendary builder of churches. His Welsh counterpart, Gofannon, appeared in the Mabinogion.
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goitre ► Golden Gate Bridge I 775
goitre Enlargement of the thyroid gland, causing a prominent swelling at the throat. The thyroid can grow to 50 times its normal weight, inter¬ fere with breathing and swallowing, and cause a choking feeling. Simple (endemic) goitre, the most common, is due to low iodine intake. It and related conditions result from various defects in thyroid hormone synthe¬ sis (hypothyroidism). Advanced cases are treated with thyroid hormone or surgical removal of the thyroid if it obstructs breathing. The cause of sporadic goitre, which occurs in areas where iodine intake is more than adequate, remains a mystery. An enlarged thyroid may have normally functioning tissue or may produce too much hormone (hyperthyroidism). See also Graves disease.
Golan \'go-,lan\ Heights Arabic Al-Jawlan \al-jau-'lan\ Hilly area, southwestern Syria. It overlooks the upper Jordan River valley; its maxi¬ mum elevation is 7,297 ft (2,224 m). It was occupied by the Israeli army during the Six-Day War of 1967. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, a UN buffer zone was established between Syrians and Israelis in the heights. In 1981 Israel unilaterally annexed the part of the Golan that it held. Talks were started by the two countries in 2000 in an attempt to resolve the situation.
Golconda \gal-'kan-d3\ Fortress and ruined city, Andhra Pradesh state, southern India. Located 5 mi (8 km) west of modem Hyderabad, it was the capital (1512-1687) of one of the five Muslim sultanates of the Dec- can. It was conquered in 1687 by the emperor Aurangzeb and was annexed to the Mughal empire. The fortress, with palaces and mosques, remains intact. Historically, Golconda was famous for its diamonds, mined in the nearby hills.
gold Metallic chemical element, one of the transition elements, chemical symbol Au, atomic number 79. It is a dense, lustrous, yellow, malleable precious metal, so durable that it is virtually indestructible, often found uncombined in nature. Jewelry and other decorative objects have been crafted from gold for thousands of years. It has been used for coins, to back paper currencies, and as a reserve asset. Gold is widely distributed in all igneous rocks, usually pure but in low concentrations; its recovery from ores and deposits has been a major preoccupation since ancient times (see cyanide process). The world’s gold supply has seen three great leaps, with Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492, with discov¬ eries in California (see gold rush) and Australia (1850-75), and discov¬ eries in Alaska, Yukon (see Klondike), and South Africa (1890-1915). Pure gold is too soft for prolonged handling; it is usually used in alloys with silver, copper, and other metals. In addition to being used in jewelry and as currency, gold is used in electrical contacts and circuits, as a reflective layer in space applications and on building windows, and in filling and replacing teeth. Dental alloys are about 75% gold, 10% silver. In jewelry, its purity is expressed in 24ths, or karats: 24-karat is pure, 12-karat is 50% gold, etc. Its compounds, in which it has valence 1 or 3, are used mainly in plating and other decorative processes; a soluble chloride com¬ pound has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
Gold Coast Section of the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, western Africa. Extending approximately from Axim, Ghana, in the west to the Volta River in the east, it was so called because it was an important source of gold. It was an area of intense colonial rivalry from the 17th century. Acquired as a colony by the British in the 19th century and named the Gold Coast, the area achieved independence as the Republic of Ghana in 1957.
Gold Coast See Ghana
gold reserve Fund of gold bullion or coin held by a government or bank. In the past, banks accumulated gold reserves to fulfill their prom¬ ise to pay their depositors in gold. Commercial banks received deposits subject to repayment in gold on demand and issued notes redeemable in gold on demand. Most gold reserves eventually shifted to central banks, which took over the function of issuing paper money. Gold reserves were moved again in the 1930s, when many governments required their cen¬ tral banks to turn over to the national treasuries all or most of their gold holdings. In the U.S., the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 required Federal Reserve banks to turn over all gold bullion or coin to the U.S. Treasury, which placed most of the reserves at Fort Knox.
gold rush Rapid influx of fortune seekers to the site of newly discov¬ ered gold deposits. In North America, the first major gold strike occurred in California in 1848, when John Marshall, a carpenter building a saw¬ mill for John Sutter, found gold. Within a year about 80,000 “forty-niners” (as the fortune seekers of 1849 were called) had flocked to the California
gold fields, and 250,000 had arrived by 1853. Some mining camps grew into permanent settlements, and the demand for food, housing, and sup¬ plies propelled the new state’s economy. As gold became more difficult to extract, companies and mechanical mining methods replaced individual prospectors. Smaller gold rushes occurred throughout the second half of the 19th century in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Arizona, and Alaska, resulting in the rapid settlement of many areas; where gold veins proved small, the settlements later became ghost towns. Major gold rushes also occurred in Australia (1851), South Africa (1886), and Canada (1896). See also Klondike gold rush.
gold standard Monetary system in which the standard unit of cur¬ rency is a fixed quantity of gold or is freely convertible into gold at a fixed price. The gold standard was first adopted in Britain in 1821. Ger¬ many, France, and the U.S. instituted it in the 1870s, prompted by North American gold strikes that increased the supply of gold. The gold stan¬ dard ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914; it was reestablished in 1928, but because of the relative scarcity of gold, most nations adopted a gold-exchange standard, supplementing their gold reserves with curren¬ cies (U.S. dollars and British pounds) convertible into gold at a stable rate of exchange. Though the gold-exchange standard collapsed during the Great Depression, the U.S. set a minimum dollar price for gold, an action that allowed for the restoration of an international gold standard after World War II. In 1971 dwindling gold reserves and an unfavourable bal¬ ance of payments led the U.S. to suspend the free convertibility of dollars into gold, and the gold standard was abandoned. See also bimetallism; EXCHANGE RATE; SILVER STANDARD.
Goldberg, Arthur J(oseph) (b. Aug. 8, 1908, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—d. Jan. 19, 1990, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist. After passing the Illinois bar examination at the age of 20, he practiced law in Chicago from 1929 to 1948. He first gained national attention as counsel for the Chicago News¬ paper Guild during its 1938 strike. In 1948 he went to Washington, D.C., as general counsel for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the United Steelworkers of America. He was instrumental in merging the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO in 1955. After serving as U.S. secretary of labour (1961-62), he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States (1962-65). At the request of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, he gave up his seat on the court to become U.S. ambassador to the UN (1965— 68), a post he resigned in protest over Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War. He twice served as ambassador-at-large for Pres. Jimmy Carter.