THE MYTH OF KING MIDAS:

"Midas was a king who was nice to a friend of the God of Wine, and so he gets a wish from the God of Wine! NICE! And so Midas wishes that everything he touched would turn to gold.

Instantly the ground he's standing on transforms into gold!

The gold change races across the planet's surface and down into the mantle like a shockwave, transmuting it instantly. In seconds, the Earth's iron-nickel core becomes pure non-ferrous gold, and the planet's magnetic field is lost. Unshielded from solar wind, every living creatures begins to absorb desperately fatal amounts of radiation. The soft gold of the planetary crust is unable to sustain the weight placed upon it, and begins to buckle and distort.

Midas watches in horror as his planet dies a golden death!"

"But not for long!

He's soon overcome by the terrible sensation of drowning on dry land: any air that touches his lungs is being transmuted into tiny flecks of gold. He suffocates and dies as his lungs fill with the formaly precious metal.

Air that touches his cooling body continues to transmute, and he's soon covered in a fine golden layer of ash."

"The moral is not to make wishes like that, King Midas!!"