Did you know aluminum used to be considered a precious metal?

Despite the fact that aluminum is the most common metal in Earth’s crust, prior to the 1880’s it was incredibly difficult to refine aluminum ores. This means for most of human history, pure aluminum was exceptionally rare and incredibly expensive.

But in the 1880’s refining aluminum became trivial using electrolysis, causing its value to plummet. This combined with how common it is to find in Earth’s crust is why we now use it for cans and foil.