Music Friday: Ed Sheeran’s Grandpa Makes a Wedding Ring From Dental Gold

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you sensational songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Ed Sheeran tells the heartwarming story of his struggling grandfather, who made a wedding ring from dental gold in his 2017 hit, “Nancy Mulligan.”

The song chronicles the wartime love story of his grandparents and how their relationship flourished despite religious differences and the objections of their families.

With the scene set during the Second World War, the four-time Grammy winner recounts in the voice of grandpa William Sheeran how he fell in love with Nancy Mulligan at London’s Guy’s Hospital. He was a struggling dentist and she was a nurse.

Sheeran sings, “On the summer day when I proposed, I made that wedding ring from dentist gold / And I asked her father but her daddy said no / You can’t marry my daughter.”

“One was a Protestant from Belfast and [the other] was a Catholic from southern Ireland,” Sheeran explained on the Beats 1 radio show. “They got engaged and no one turned up to the wedding.”

The 32-year-old superstar noted that his grandparents were so poor that they had to borrow clothes for their wedding and that the gold for his grandmother’s wedding ring came from a collection of gold teeth his grandfather had collected during dental surgeries.

(Note: Gold used to make fine jewelry is generally 14-karat or 18-karat and alloyed with copper, silver and zinc. Dental gold is usually a 16-karat alloy containing palladium, silver, copper and/or tin.)

“[They] had this sort of Romeo and Juliet romance, which is like the most romantic thing," Sheeran said on the radio show. "I thought I’d write a song about it and make it a jig.”

Sheeran's grandparents were married for more than 60 years and had a profound impact on their grandson’s life. William passed away in 2013 and Nancy died in April of 2023.

“Nancy Mulligan” is part of the Deluxe Edition of Ed Sheeran’s third studio album ÷ (pronounced Divide), and despite the fact that it wasn’t officially released as a single, the song still managed to chart in 17 countries. Divide made its debut at #1 on the US Billboard 200 chart.

Please check out Sheeran's 2017 live performance of "Nancy Mulligan" on The Late Late Show. The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Nancy Mulligan”
Written by Ed Sheeran, Benjamin Levin, Johnny McDaid, Foy Vance, Amy Wadge and Murray Cummings. Performed by Ed Sheeran.

I was 24 years old when I met the woman I would call my own
Twenty two grand kids now growing old, in the house that your brother bought ya
On the summer day when I proposed, I made that wedding ring from dentist gold
And I asked her father but her daddy said "No"
You can’t marry my daughter

She and I went on the run
Don’t care about religion
I’m gonna marry the woman I love
Down by the Wexford border
She was Nancy Mulligan, and I was William Sheeran
She took my name and then we were one
Down by the Wexford border

Well, I met her at Guy's in the Second World War
She was working on a soldier’s ward
Never had I seen such beauty before
The moment that I saw her
Nancy was my yellow rose
And we got married wearing borrowed clothes
We got eight children now growing old
Five sons and three daughters

She and I went on the run
Don’t care about religion
I’m gonna marry the woman I love
Down by the Wexford border
She was Nancy Mulligan, and I was William Sheeran
She took my name and then we were one
Down by the Wexford border

From her snow white streak in her jet black hair
Over 60 years I’ve been loving her
Now we’re sat by the fire, in our old armchairs
Nancy, I adore ya

From a farm boy born near Belfast town
I never worried about the king and crown
Cause I found my heart upon the southern ground
There’s no difference, I assure ya

She and I went on the run
Don’t care about religion
I’m gonna marry the woman I love
Down by the Wexford border
She was Nancy Mulligan, and I was William Sheeran
She took my name and then we were one
Down by the Wexford border

Credit: Screen capture via YouTube.com / The Late Late Show.

Royal Canadian Mint Celebrates Cultural Diversity With Gem-Adorned Coins

Since 2019, the Royal Canadian Mint has been celebrating the Great White North's cultural diversity with an annual release of gem-adorned gold coins. The 2024 installment, which honors Canadians who trace their ancestry to Iran, Ancient Persia and beyond, is set with a genuine turquoise in the center of a 99.99% pure gold, 1-ounce coin.

The coin's intricately rendered reverse side was designed by Iranian-Canadian artist Soheila Esfahani, whose work reflects a contemporary take on traditional elements. For this coin, Esfahani incorporated Persian Eslimi patterns, Shah Abbasi flower motifs, lotus flowers inspired by the reliefs of Persepolis, stylized maple leaves symbolizing Canadian identity and a paisley arrangement in the center.

Genuine turquoise was selected as the featured gemstone because it figures prominently in Iranian art and architecture, and continues to be highly prized for its deep blue-green hue. Historically, Ancient Iranians called turquoise "piruzeh," which meant victory. They also believed that piruzeh offered protection.

According to the Mint, the coin's balanced symmetry and stirring symbolism are meant to inspire, to urge us to transcend our perceived limits, and to find inner peace and tranquility.

The obverse of the coin features the Susanna Blunt effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, as well as a special marking that includes four pearls symbolizing the four effigies of the Queen that have graced Canadian coins throughout her reign.

It also includes the Queen's name, the dates of her reign (1952-2022), Canada, the year 2024, the "200 Dollars" face value and the Latin phrase, "D.G. Regina," which means "By the grace of God, Queen."

Measuring 30 mm in diameter, the coin will have a limited mintage of 275 pieces. The coin has a face value of $200, but is priced at CAD 4,499.95 (about $3,334). The Mint pointed out that since turquoise features distinctive patterning and hue variations, no two coins will look exactly the same. Each collectible coin is presented in a Royal Canadian Mint-branded clamshell box.

The turquoise-set coin is the fifth in the Royal Canadian Mint’s "Celebrating Canada’s Diversity" series, which previously honored Sinhala and Indian cultures with a ruby (2019), Scottish and Irish descendants with an emerald (2021), French-Canadians with a blue sapphire (2022) and the indigenous Haida people with an ocean-colored abalone shell (2023). The annual series was temporarily disrupted in 2020 due to COVID-19.

Credits: Images courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mint.

Rubies, Sapphires Are Raining Down on Scorched Exoplanet WASP-121b

As a record-breaking Arctic blast blankets the US heartland with ice and snow, it's raining liquid sapphires and rubies on the heavy metal exoplanet called WASP-121b, where temperatures regularly soar to 4,700 degrees Celsius (8,492 degrees Fahrenheit).

A team of astronomers led by European Space Agency research fellow Quentin Changeat analyzed three years of data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope and concluded that WASP-121b's turbulent atmosphere provides a perfect environment for precious stone precipitation.

Located 880 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis, the exoplanet WASP-121b is so close to its host star that it can complete its orbit in just 30 hours. Because it is tidally locked, the day side of the exoplanet always faces the blazing hot star and the night side (730 degrees Celsius, 1,346 degrees Fahrenheit) always faces out into space.

The extreme 4,000-degree temperature difference between the two hemispheres gives rise to strong winds that sweep around the entire planet from west to east at 18,000 kilometers per hour. The winds blow vaporized metals from WASP-121b’s torched dayside to its relatively cooler (but still brutally hot) nightside. The temperature change allows the metals to condense into clouds, resulting in rain that might look like liquified iron and gemstones.

The three-year deep dive into the archival weather data enabled Changeat's team to reconstruct WASP-121b's changing atmosphere and weather in a way that had never been accomplished for a planet outside the solar system, according to advancedsciencenews.com.

“Those supercomputer models helped discover a new storm-generation mechanism where multiple cyclones are repeatedly generated and destroyed,” Changeat told the science website.

According to NASA, WASP-121b is a doomed exoplanet. It's nearly twice the size of Jupiter, but is orbiting so close to its parent star that it is literally being torn apart. Gravity causes enormous tidal forces, which are stretching the planet into the shape of an egg. The star’s gravity also pulls material off the planet into a disk around the star. In 10 million years, predicts NASA, this alien world could be completely consumed.

“We were surprised by how extreme the conditions on ultra-hot Jupiters can be,” Changeat told advancedsciencenews.com. “While storms and other extreme phenomena are common on the Earth and solar system planets, it is much more impressive on ultra-hot Jupiters where storms the size of the Earth can easily be generated.”

Credit: Illustration by NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.