August 12, 2013 • 22 mins
The Hope Diamond has traveled across continents, been stolen in revolutions, and was even the signature accessory of a wealthy heiress for nearly four decades. The first part of the discussion covers the stone's history up to the modern era.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today we're talking about a
famous jim that I'm shocked has never been covered on
(00:21):
the podcast before. And it's one of those things that, honestly,
we could probably get seven different episodes out of if
we really wanted to pursue some of these trails, but
we're going for two. So, uh, we're talking about the
Hope Diamond, and this will be the first of two
parts on the Hope diamonds. Uh. Just about everybody has
heard of the Hope diamond, but often once you start
(00:42):
talking to them, you realize that it's long and storied
history kind of getting gets mixed up in people's heads
with other famous jewels, and sometimes people think it's the
largest diamond in the world, which it is not. I
believe that honor goes to the colon and diamond. Uh,
but what it is that is extremely rare because if
it's distinctive blue color, and it's fabled because it has
(01:05):
a very long and twisting history, Uh, it may or
may not have a curse on it. If you believe
in such things, and it's kind of just become a
rock star amongst jewels, and everyone knows about it, but
not always all the details and kind of what the
real scoop is. Have you seen it before? I have not,
(01:25):
I have, I have not. So here's the thing. If
you take a small child to the Smithsonian and tell
them they are going to see a huge diamond, they
will be disappointed. Yes, they will expect a diamond as
big as their head, and the hope diamond is a
diamond as big as a walnut. Yes. I have actually
(01:46):
seen videos from some of the curators, particularly Jeffrey Post,
who will quote a couple of times in this where
he says that adults have that same reaction to you,
like they come in expecting it to be this big
mammoth thing and then they're kind of like, oh, it's
I mean, it's big, but it's it's it's big, but
it's so small. Yeah, And I missed it because whenever
(02:09):
I'm at the Smithsonian, there's always some other exhibit that
is there that gets all of my attention, and I
end up going it's closing time and I end up
having to run out the door. It's okay, but it's
on my list. I gotta see it. So the Hope
diamond is twenty five point six millimeters long, twenty one
point seven eight millimeters wide, and twelve millimeters deep, so
(02:31):
about a walnut. It is not large, uh, compared to
things in the world that are large. It is quite
large compared to other blue diamonds. It is forty five
point five to carrots. Yeah, and that's actually a revised number.
It had been believed to be forty four carrots for
a while and then when they took it out of
its setting at one point they realize like, oh, it's
(02:51):
actually a little bigger than we thought initially. That's clarity
grade is VS. One. So, according to the Gemal Logical
Institute of America's Clarity Scale, there are six categories of clarity,
and then some of them are subdivided, so that gets
a total of eleven different grades. VS. One is the
fifth of these grades. It's the first level of what's
(03:14):
called very slightly included, which means that crystal can be
seen in the flat facets of the gym. So the
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History says that this rating
has been given because there's some whitish graining that's present
inside the Hope Diamond, which itself is a very fancy
(03:34):
dark grayish blue. Yeah, that's actually it's a it's catalog
color is fancy, dark grayish blue. I want to call
it very fancy because it's a big Hawkin diamond. It is. UH.
And there are many theories about UM its actual age
and where it originated, but where it kind of um
(03:56):
gets put on the map is in the sixteen hundreds,
and the first European that we know of to touch
it was a man named Jean Baptiste Tavernier, and he
was born in Paris in sixteen o five to a
map and chartmaker. UH. And he would become a world
traveler and an extremely successful gem merchant. And it's like
just fifteen years old, Tavernier had been traveling throughout Europe
(04:19):
and had traveled as far as Persia by the time
he was twenty eight, which was really quite something at
that time. In sixteen thirty one, Tavernier made his first
trip to Asia. He would eventually make six trips total
throughout Asa, the next four being in sixteen thirty eight,
sixteen forty, sixteen forty three. This one involved a controversy
(04:41):
with the Dutch authorities over some pay bills. He was
forced to surrender and transit and sixteen fifty seven. And
then in sixteen sixty two Tavernier got married. He married
a jeweler's daughter. But his newlywed statis did not keep
him home very long because he left for his sixth
Asian excursion in sixteen sixty UH. And on that one
(05:01):
he was headed to India, and he made a stop
in Persia. And by this point he knew a lot
of the you know, high up government officials in all
of these places he visited because he was a gem
merchant and he had really cultivated some uh relationships with
all of these people. Mining of diamonds in India goes
(05:22):
back to at least eight hundred BC, and by the
sixteen hundreds, India was recognized as a major diamond center.
So it's no surprise that Tavernier would travel there in
search of gems. And while he was on this particular trip,
Tavernier came into possession of a diamond he described as
being a beautiful violet color, a hundred and twelve and
(05:43):
three sixteen carrots, vaguely triangular in shape and rather crudely cut.
It's believed that the diamond came from the Colure mine
in Galconda, India, but the gem merchant never specifically said
exactly how and where he got the gym, and in fact,
many famous diamonds in history have come from the Colure mine,
(06:06):
including the co Anure and the Great Mogul Diamond. We
actually have an episode on the Konure that Katie and
Sarah did like two years ago. So if people want
to read about another listen to another famous diamond story
with a curse. They all have curses. Uh. That's another
good one. But this particular diamond came to be known
as the Tavernay Blue and when Taverney returned to Europe
(06:28):
in sixteen sixty eight, he sold it to King Louis
the fourteenth of France. So the son king could not
resist its dazzling lure uh, and he sold it in
a lot to him with more than a dozen other diamonds.
This re cut reduced the gym to sixty seven carrots,
and the diamond was placed in a gold setting for
the king to wear on special occasions. At this point,
(06:48):
the diamond came to be known as the Blue Diamond
of the Crown, or more casually as the French Blue
and the Diamond remained part of the French Royal Jewels
uh and in seventeen forty nine, King Louis the fifteenth
had it set yet again, this time into a ceremonial
setting for the Order of the Golden Fleece, and at
that time court jeweler Andre Jacquesman did the honors. The
(07:11):
French Revolution is the next big event in the history
of the diamond. The jewels from the French royal treasury,
including the French Blue, were handed off to the revolutionary
regime in seventeen nine after Louis the sixteenth and his
Queen Marie Antoinette tried to flee the country. In September
seventeen two, while the royal family was imprisoned, the crown
(07:35):
jewels were looted from their holding place at the Place
de lacrim Cord over the course of several days. During
that time, the French Blue vanished, and there are lots
of theories on what happened to it and how it
may have been fenced and made its way elsewhere. But
like I said, we could have gotten seven episodes out
of this. We could have done an episode just on
(07:56):
Taverny because he's very fascinating. But so the blue kind
of vanishes literally from the record for a while, and
it's not until two decades later that it comes up
again in In eighteen twelve, twenty years after it was
stolen from France, after the French Blue was stolen from
France anyway, a dark blue diamond surfaced in London, and
(08:18):
this diamond was in the possession of a merchant named
Daniel Eliason, and it was documented by a jeweler by
the name of John Francileon. Francileon described the jam as
weighing a hundred and seventy seven grains, as one carrot
is the equivalent of four grains. This puts the weight
of Aliason's gym at roughly forty five carrots, smaller than
(08:40):
the French Blue, but still an unusual deep blue color.
Although there wasn't solid evidence of the fact, and more
on this will come later, many historians long believed that
this was, in fact the stolen French gym, conveniently resurfacing
just after the Statute of Limitations on the theft would
have Now. Yeah, and I also want to point out
(09:02):
when we say it's roughly forty five carts. Going back
to that change in its weight that I mentioned before,
it actually works out to like forty four point to
five or something, I think if you do the math um.
And while there's no paper trail of the purchase or
of any purchase from Alliasin, it's believed that King George
the Fourth of England actually acquired the stone, and there's
(09:24):
a portrait of the King painted in eighteen twenty two
by Sir Thomas Lawrence that shows George wearing, among other accessories,
a Royal Order of the Golden Fleece, so another similar
to the ceremonial French setting, also set with a large
blue gym. When King George died in eighteen thirty he
left behind considerable debt, and it's believed that the diamond
(09:48):
was liquidated through private channels to settle part of the
money that was owed. But at this point it's still
not called the Hope Diamond, but we're getting there. So
almost a decade after King to the Fourth death in
eighteen thirty nine, there is mentioned once again of a
large blue diamond in the records of a banker, uh
this time a man named Henry Philip Hope, and it
(10:10):
is for him that the diamond is named. While the
diamond is listed in Hope's catalog, its acquisition and origin
are not included in the notation, so there's a lot
of hazy changing hands that goes on. Henry Philip Hope
died the same year his Catalog of Gems published eighteen
thirty nine, and a lengthy litigation battle was fought among
(10:33):
his three nephews over his estate. Eventually, his nephew, Henry
Thomas Hope, finally took possession of the Hope Diamond as
part of a split up of his assets. The gem
stayed in the family, eventually passing to Henry Thomas Hope's grandson,
Lord Francis Hope, the eighth Duke of Newcastle, and as
a provision of this inheritance, Lord Francis Hope was not
(10:56):
allowed to liquidate any of the family estate without court permission.
In but he had married a songstress wife who he
wanted to keep in the style to which she had
been accustomed, and he consequently unfortunately lived his life far
beyond his means, and in nineteen and one he was
able to attain permission from his sisters in the court
(11:18):
to sell the Hope diamond in an effort to mitigate
this mountain of debt that he had accrued. Uh And
unfortunately he divorced several months after that, so it would
seem that once things got really tough, the marriage kind
of soured. A London dealer was quick to purchase the
diamond from Lord Francis Hope, and was just as quick
(11:38):
to then sell it to a New York jeweler, Simon Frankel,
of the firm Joseph Franklin Sons for a hundred and
forty eight thousand dollars. The diamonds sat quietly under lock
and key with the Frankels until they sold it to
Selim Habib after the depression that followed the financial panic
of nineteen o seven, and after this Thing's moved very
(11:59):
quickly for the diamond. So Salim have put the gem
up for auction in nineteen o nine, although it apparently
did not sell then, And after that auction it was
purchased by A. C. H. Rosenow, who in turn sold
it to Pierre Cartier. And there is also in this
stretch of the diamond changing hands so quickly a little
bit of a debate about whether Sultan Abdullahamide owned the
(12:21):
stone briefly. Uh So, it seems for a few years
in the early nineteen hundreds, the Hope Diamond was really
something of a hot potato. It just kept changing hands
very very quickly. Cardier had a business relationship with American
heiress Evelyn Walsh McLean. He had sold her a ninety
four point eight carrot white diamond called the Star of
(12:42):
the East when she was on her honeymoon in nine nine,
and Cardier showed the Hope Diamond to McLean while she
was in Paris on another trip in But the society
heiress was apparently not impressed with the stone setting, and
there are also accounts that she was a little unsettled
by rumors about the Hope Diamond being cursed. Uh And
(13:02):
we'll talk about those more later as well. But Cardier
was really quite intent on selling this gem to McLean.
He felt like she was the buyer for it. The
story goes that Cardier had the stone reset and then
brought it to the US to loan to Mrs McLean
for a weekend. It was quite a sales pitch. I
feel like I've seen this happen on sitcoms when I
(13:26):
was thinking about it. It also made me think of
when you do petted options. So yeah, take the kitten
home for the weekend to see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah,
I feel like I've seen an I Love Lucy episode
or something where she she gets a fancy diamond necklace
that's to be borrowed and she doesn't want to give
it back anyway. And Evelyn's autobiography, she wrote about that
(13:48):
loaner weekend. For hours, that jewel stared at me, and
sometime during the night I began to really want the thing.
Then I put the chain around my neck and hooked
my life to a destiny, were good or evil? And
McLean's purchase of the Hope diamond caused a sensation. It
was written up in newspapers and they even described the
(14:11):
manner in which it would be set and worn. And
there's uh an article in the New York Times from
January nineteen eleven reporting the sale and also saying the
diamond will now be worn by Mrs McLean as a
head ornament, arranged in a band do the large stone
being placed immediately in front, and with other diamonds of
lesser size studying the setting bands. So it really was
(14:35):
a big deal. People knew about this diamond already because
it was so sizeable and kind of famous and already
had these curse stories around it, so it was newsmaking
that similar to how if someone you know spent three
million dollars on a famous piece of jewelry, now it
would hit the news like just the Royal baby's swaddling
(14:56):
made the news. Evelyn wore the Hope diamond frequently. It
became her signature piece, and although she loved it, she
was constantly getting warnings from both friends and strangers that
her beloved accessory was really bad luck. This curse rumor
had been around for a while, but it seems like
it really picked up steam around the same time that
(15:17):
it was changing hands in nineteen o nine. UH and
Evelyn did experience some various tragic events in her life. UH.
In nineteen nineteen, her son Vincent, who was quite young
at the time, died shortly after being struck by a
car outside the family home. UH. In nineteen twenty nine,
she and her husband Ned McLean separated when he ran
(15:39):
off with another woman, and Ned died UH some years
later in a santatory in a sanatorium from issues associated
with alcoholism and then uh, in nine six, Evelyn's daughter
died of a drug overdose. So while she loved it, uh,
there were lots she loved the diamond. There were lots
(16:02):
of tragic things happening in her life, but she never
blamed any of these tragic things on her beloved jewel.
She said, quote, what tragedies have befallen me might have
occurred had I never seen or touched the Hope Diamond.
My observations have persuaded me that tragedies for anyone who
lives are not escapable. I kind of love that she
(16:24):
did that well, and I kind of she said, don't
blame the diamonds well, and when you were talking about
all these things that had happened to her, I kind
of want to, like counter with all the terrible things
that happened to my grandmother. And she was a very
modest person who had no Hope diamond. Yeah. I mean,
I think tragic things just happen to people. It's an
unfortunate aspect of life. And it's easy to attribute those
to the presence of a thing and focus that as
(16:47):
you're the bad luck item that's causing them all. But um,
sometimes bad things just happened. And she really seemed to
love that jewel. I mean there are movies of her
wearing it that she took of herself. There photog almost
any photograph of her features it. Uh. And she actually
died the year after her daughter in n she was sixty. Uh,
(17:09):
and she had been wearing the Hope Diamond consistently for
thirty six years, and it was as a part of
her jewelry collection that it was set in the pendant form,
surrounded by the smaller stones that it's recognized for today.
So she stopped wearing it in the headpiece and began
to wear it as a pendant. And Uh, at some point,
I would actually love to do an entire episode on
Evil and Walsh mcclaim because her life was mind boggling.
(17:32):
I mean there's even an incident where she allegedly tried
to hawk the Hope Diamond for ransom money to get
the Lindbergh baby back. Uh. She just she had a
wild ride. She threw amazing parties. She was very fascinating.
So she's certainly episode worthy. But uh, for the moment,
this is where we're gonna pause, and and this first
(17:52):
part of the Hope diamond because next we'll get into
how it kind of became part of the Smithsonian collection
and the curse is allegedly on it, and some interesting
scientific study that's been done on the diamond in more
modern times. But that's it's sort of origin story. Uh.
And we'll reference back to some of those because they
(18:13):
come up in the curse discussion. Uh. So yeah, Part
two of the Hope Diamond will be coming next. I
believe you may have some listener mail. Well I do. Indeed,
this actually uh was sent to us in a message
on Facebook, and it is from our listener management, and
he says, I was really excited to see the topic
for the recent podcast on Pluto. I've always had a
(18:35):
soft spot in my heart for the little guy. When
I was ten years old, I made friends with an
elderly man on a camping trip. While all the boring
grown ups sat around talking about boring adult stuff. The
elderly man told me stories about the stars and planets
we could see that night, and then he told me
a number of rather cheesy puns, mostly about crows. I
found out on the ride home that he was actually
(18:55):
famous astronomer named Clyde Tomba. Yes, that Clyde Tomba who
to run for Stitt in case anyone listening doesn't recall,
is the person who is credited with finding Pluto. We
had a chance to hang out on a number of
other camping trips, and I made sure my parents invited
my new friend and his wife over for dinner as
often as was possible. A few years later, Clyde shared
the pictures of Voyager Twose Neptune fly by, explaining the
(19:17):
science and new discoveries to many of us, blowing our minds.
Then he told me a few more crow puns. He
was an incredibly kind, intelligent man, believed in UFOs and
love cheesy puns. I recently read that some of his
ashes were included on board the New Horizons probe, so
he'll actually get to visit his discovery in person. That's
some pretty cool stuff. Uh. And then he includes some
(19:39):
of the puns that Clyde told him. And all of
this does um fall in line with things that I
have read by Tomba's colleagues that he loved these cookie
puns and it was just a very sweet and really
sharing man like he loved to talk about his work.
Can you tell us one of the Crow funds, because
I'm going to have to get good with them otherwise
they're funny. Are you ready? Yes? What is a row's
(20:00):
favorite part of the sun the chromosphere? What is a
crow's favorite metal chrome? And then what is the crow's
favorite caveman chromagna word? Uh? So, which are so cute? Uh?
And a lot of people have are several people have
written us about the Plato episode and about our comment
(20:21):
that it's the only planet to have been demoted, and
they're like, no, no, no, there are others like series
and they mentioned some others, and I want to do
more research on it before we actually talk about that,
because there is some um controversy, it seems, or just
you know, debate. I don't know controversies the right word,
even in the astronomy community about it, uh, including like
(20:42):
I think and I'm just turning I's top of my head,
so don't quote any of this as accurate. But I
think even like the first time it was reported, the
person that discovered it thought it was a planet, that
reported it as a different heavenly body because he didn't
know that it would meet any of those criteria yet.
And so it's been a little bit confused even though
it was taught as a planet at in some in
(21:04):
the eighteen hundreds for a little while. So we've gotten
we've gotten letters for doing more research, many many, many,
many many letters. Got other possible devoted planets, many many letters. Yeah,
so we're not ignoring this. We just wanna, you know,
make sure we have low information before we start talking
about it. So that's a scoop if you would like
(21:27):
to write us. And I just love that people are
excited about astronomy and astronomy history. It's very excited about
our moded planet. Are things that super love. Uh, And
if you want to write us, you can do so
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also
connect with us on Twitter at missed in History, at
Facebook dot com, slash history class stuff, um tumbler at
(21:47):
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If you would like to learn a little bit more
about what we've talked about today, you can go to
our website. Search for the word diamonds and you'll get
an article called how diamonds work, And it actually does
include a section on famous diamonds that mentions the Hope diamond.
Of course, because it is super famous, so if you
would like to learn about that, or almost anything else
(22:08):
you can think of, you should do that at our website,
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today we're talking about a
famous jim that I'm shocked has never been covered on
(00:21):
the podcast before. And it's one of those things that, honestly,
we could probably get seven different episodes out of if
we really wanted to pursue some of these trails, but
we're going for two. So, uh, we're talking about the
Hope Diamond, and this will be the first of two
parts on the Hope diamonds. Uh. Just about everybody has
heard of the Hope diamond, but often once you start
(00:42):
talking to them, you realize that it's long and storied
history kind of getting gets mixed up in people's heads
with other famous jewels, and sometimes people think it's the
largest diamond in the world, which it is not. I
believe that honor goes to the colon and diamond. Uh,
but what it is that is extremely rare because if
it's distinctive blue color, and it's fabled because it has
(01:05):
a very long and twisting history, Uh, it may or
may not have a curse on it. If you believe
in such things, and it's kind of just become a
rock star amongst jewels, and everyone knows about it, but
not always all the details and kind of what the
real scoop is. Have you seen it before? I have not,
(01:25):
I have, I have not. So here's the thing. If
you take a small child to the Smithsonian and tell
them they are going to see a huge diamond, they
will be disappointed. Yes, they will expect a diamond as
big as their head, and the hope diamond is a
diamond as big as a walnut. Yes. I have actually
(01:46):
seen videos from some of the curators, particularly Jeffrey Post,
who will quote a couple of times in this where
he says that adults have that same reaction to you,
like they come in expecting it to be this big
mammoth thing and then they're kind of like, oh, it's
I mean, it's big, but it's it's it's big, but
it's so small. Yeah, And I missed it because whenever
(02:09):
I'm at the Smithsonian, there's always some other exhibit that
is there that gets all of my attention, and I
end up going it's closing time and I end up
having to run out the door. It's okay, but it's
on my list. I gotta see it. So the Hope
diamond is twenty five point six millimeters long, twenty one
point seven eight millimeters wide, and twelve millimeters deep, so
(02:31):
about a walnut. It is not large, uh, compared to
things in the world that are large. It is quite
large compared to other blue diamonds. It is forty five
point five to carrots. Yeah, and that's actually a revised number.
It had been believed to be forty four carrots for
a while and then when they took it out of
its setting at one point they realize like, oh, it's
(02:51):
actually a little bigger than we thought initially. That's clarity
grade is VS. One. So, according to the Gemal Logical
Institute of America's Clarity Scale, there are six categories of clarity,
and then some of them are subdivided, so that gets
a total of eleven different grades. VS. One is the
fifth of these grades. It's the first level of what's
(03:14):
called very slightly included, which means that crystal can be
seen in the flat facets of the gym. So the
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History says that this rating
has been given because there's some whitish graining that's present
inside the Hope Diamond, which itself is a very fancy
(03:34):
dark grayish blue. Yeah, that's actually it's a it's catalog
color is fancy, dark grayish blue. I want to call
it very fancy because it's a big Hawkin diamond. It is. UH.
And there are many theories about UM its actual age
and where it originated, but where it kind of um
(03:56):
gets put on the map is in the sixteen hundreds,
and the first European that we know of to touch
it was a man named Jean Baptiste Tavernier, and he
was born in Paris in sixteen o five to a
map and chartmaker. UH. And he would become a world
traveler and an extremely successful gem merchant. And it's like
just fifteen years old, Tavernier had been traveling throughout Europe
(04:19):
and had traveled as far as Persia by the time
he was twenty eight, which was really quite something at
that time. In sixteen thirty one, Tavernier made his first
trip to Asia. He would eventually make six trips total
throughout Asa, the next four being in sixteen thirty eight,
sixteen forty, sixteen forty three. This one involved a controversy
(04:41):
with the Dutch authorities over some pay bills. He was
forced to surrender and transit and sixteen fifty seven. And
then in sixteen sixty two Tavernier got married. He married
a jeweler's daughter. But his newlywed statis did not keep
him home very long because he left for his sixth
Asian excursion in sixteen sixty UH. And on that one
(05:01):
he was headed to India, and he made a stop
in Persia. And by this point he knew a lot
of the you know, high up government officials in all
of these places he visited because he was a gem
merchant and he had really cultivated some uh relationships with
all of these people. Mining of diamonds in India goes
(05:22):
back to at least eight hundred BC, and by the
sixteen hundreds, India was recognized as a major diamond center.
So it's no surprise that Tavernier would travel there in
search of gems. And while he was on this particular trip,
Tavernier came into possession of a diamond he described as
being a beautiful violet color, a hundred and twelve and
(05:43):
three sixteen carrots, vaguely triangular in shape and rather crudely cut.
It's believed that the diamond came from the Colure mine
in Galconda, India, but the gem merchant never specifically said
exactly how and where he got the gym, and in fact,
many famous diamonds in history have come from the Colure mine,
(06:06):
including the co Anure and the Great Mogul Diamond. We
actually have an episode on the Konure that Katie and
Sarah did like two years ago. So if people want
to read about another listen to another famous diamond story
with a curse. They all have curses. Uh. That's another
good one. But this particular diamond came to be known
as the Tavernay Blue and when Taverney returned to Europe
(06:28):
in sixteen sixty eight, he sold it to King Louis
the fourteenth of France. So the son king could not
resist its dazzling lure uh, and he sold it in
a lot to him with more than a dozen other diamonds.
This re cut reduced the gym to sixty seven carrots,
and the diamond was placed in a gold setting for
the king to wear on special occasions. At this point,
(06:48):
the diamond came to be known as the Blue Diamond
of the Crown, or more casually as the French Blue
and the Diamond remained part of the French Royal Jewels
uh and in seventeen forty nine, King Louis the fifteenth
had it set yet again, this time into a ceremonial
setting for the Order of the Golden Fleece, and at
that time court jeweler Andre Jacquesman did the honors. The
(07:11):
French Revolution is the next big event in the history
of the diamond. The jewels from the French royal treasury,
including the French Blue, were handed off to the revolutionary
regime in seventeen nine after Louis the sixteenth and his
Queen Marie Antoinette tried to flee the country. In September
seventeen two, while the royal family was imprisoned, the crown
(07:35):
jewels were looted from their holding place at the Place
de lacrim Cord over the course of several days. During
that time, the French Blue vanished, and there are lots
of theories on what happened to it and how it
may have been fenced and made its way elsewhere. But
like I said, we could have gotten seven episodes out
of this. We could have done an episode just on
(07:56):
Taverny because he's very fascinating. But so the blue kind
of vanishes literally from the record for a while, and
it's not until two decades later that it comes up
again in In eighteen twelve, twenty years after it was
stolen from France, after the French Blue was stolen from
France anyway, a dark blue diamond surfaced in London, and
(08:18):
this diamond was in the possession of a merchant named
Daniel Eliason, and it was documented by a jeweler by
the name of John Francileon. Francileon described the jam as
weighing a hundred and seventy seven grains, as one carrot
is the equivalent of four grains. This puts the weight
of Aliason's gym at roughly forty five carrots, smaller than
(08:40):
the French Blue, but still an unusual deep blue color.
Although there wasn't solid evidence of the fact, and more
on this will come later, many historians long believed that
this was, in fact the stolen French gym, conveniently resurfacing
just after the Statute of Limitations on the theft would
have Now. Yeah, and I also want to point out
(09:02):
when we say it's roughly forty five carts. Going back
to that change in its weight that I mentioned before,
it actually works out to like forty four point to
five or something, I think if you do the math um.
And while there's no paper trail of the purchase or
of any purchase from Alliasin, it's believed that King George
the Fourth of England actually acquired the stone, and there's
(09:24):
a portrait of the King painted in eighteen twenty two
by Sir Thomas Lawrence that shows George wearing, among other accessories,
a Royal Order of the Golden Fleece, so another similar
to the ceremonial French setting, also set with a large
blue gym. When King George died in eighteen thirty he
left behind considerable debt, and it's believed that the diamond
(09:48):
was liquidated through private channels to settle part of the
money that was owed. But at this point it's still
not called the Hope Diamond, but we're getting there. So
almost a decade after King to the Fourth death in
eighteen thirty nine, there is mentioned once again of a
large blue diamond in the records of a banker, uh
this time a man named Henry Philip Hope, and it
(10:10):
is for him that the diamond is named. While the
diamond is listed in Hope's catalog, its acquisition and origin
are not included in the notation, so there's a lot
of hazy changing hands that goes on. Henry Philip Hope
died the same year his Catalog of Gems published eighteen
thirty nine, and a lengthy litigation battle was fought among
(10:33):
his three nephews over his estate. Eventually, his nephew, Henry
Thomas Hope, finally took possession of the Hope Diamond as
part of a split up of his assets. The gem
stayed in the family, eventually passing to Henry Thomas Hope's grandson,
Lord Francis Hope, the eighth Duke of Newcastle, and as
a provision of this inheritance, Lord Francis Hope was not
(10:56):
allowed to liquidate any of the family estate without court permission.
In but he had married a songstress wife who he
wanted to keep in the style to which she had
been accustomed, and he consequently unfortunately lived his life far
beyond his means, and in nineteen and one he was
able to attain permission from his sisters in the court
(11:18):
to sell the Hope diamond in an effort to mitigate
this mountain of debt that he had accrued. Uh And
unfortunately he divorced several months after that, so it would
seem that once things got really tough, the marriage kind
of soured. A London dealer was quick to purchase the
diamond from Lord Francis Hope, and was just as quick
(11:38):
to then sell it to a New York jeweler, Simon Frankel,
of the firm Joseph Franklin Sons for a hundred and
forty eight thousand dollars. The diamonds sat quietly under lock
and key with the Frankels until they sold it to
Selim Habib after the depression that followed the financial panic
of nineteen o seven, and after this Thing's moved very
(11:59):
quickly for the diamond. So Salim have put the gem
up for auction in nineteen o nine, although it apparently
did not sell then, And after that auction it was
purchased by A. C. H. Rosenow, who in turn sold
it to Pierre Cartier. And there is also in this
stretch of the diamond changing hands so quickly a little
bit of a debate about whether Sultan Abdullahamide owned the
(12:21):
stone briefly. Uh So, it seems for a few years
in the early nineteen hundreds, the Hope Diamond was really
something of a hot potato. It just kept changing hands
very very quickly. Cardier had a business relationship with American
heiress Evelyn Walsh McLean. He had sold her a ninety
four point eight carrot white diamond called the Star of
(12:42):
the East when she was on her honeymoon in nine nine,
and Cardier showed the Hope Diamond to McLean while she
was in Paris on another trip in But the society
heiress was apparently not impressed with the stone setting, and
there are also accounts that she was a little unsettled
by rumors about the Hope Diamond being cursed. Uh And
(13:02):
we'll talk about those more later as well. But Cardier
was really quite intent on selling this gem to McLean.
He felt like she was the buyer for it. The
story goes that Cardier had the stone reset and then
brought it to the US to loan to Mrs McLean
for a weekend. It was quite a sales pitch. I
feel like I've seen this happen on sitcoms when I
(13:26):
was thinking about it. It also made me think of
when you do petted options. So yeah, take the kitten
home for the weekend to see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah,
I feel like I've seen an I Love Lucy episode
or something where she she gets a fancy diamond necklace
that's to be borrowed and she doesn't want to give
it back anyway. And Evelyn's autobiography, she wrote about that
(13:48):
loaner weekend. For hours, that jewel stared at me, and
sometime during the night I began to really want the thing.
Then I put the chain around my neck and hooked
my life to a destiny, were good or evil? And
McLean's purchase of the Hope diamond caused a sensation. It
was written up in newspapers and they even described the
(14:11):
manner in which it would be set and worn. And
there's uh an article in the New York Times from
January nineteen eleven reporting the sale and also saying the
diamond will now be worn by Mrs McLean as a
head ornament, arranged in a band do the large stone
being placed immediately in front, and with other diamonds of
lesser size studying the setting bands. So it really was
(14:35):
a big deal. People knew about this diamond already because
it was so sizeable and kind of famous and already
had these curse stories around it, so it was newsmaking
that similar to how if someone you know spent three
million dollars on a famous piece of jewelry, now it
would hit the news like just the Royal baby's swaddling
(14:56):
made the news. Evelyn wore the Hope diamond frequently. It
became her signature piece, and although she loved it, she
was constantly getting warnings from both friends and strangers that
her beloved accessory was really bad luck. This curse rumor
had been around for a while, but it seems like
it really picked up steam around the same time that
(15:17):
it was changing hands in nineteen o nine. UH and
Evelyn did experience some various tragic events in her life. UH.
In nineteen nineteen, her son Vincent, who was quite young
at the time, died shortly after being struck by a
car outside the family home. UH. In nineteen twenty nine,
she and her husband Ned McLean separated when he ran
(15:39):
off with another woman, and Ned died UH some years
later in a santatory in a sanatorium from issues associated
with alcoholism and then uh, in nine six, Evelyn's daughter
died of a drug overdose. So while she loved it, uh,
there were lots she loved the diamond. There were lots
(16:02):
of tragic things happening in her life, but she never
blamed any of these tragic things on her beloved jewel.
She said, quote, what tragedies have befallen me might have
occurred had I never seen or touched the Hope Diamond.
My observations have persuaded me that tragedies for anyone who
lives are not escapable. I kind of love that she
(16:24):
did that well, and I kind of she said, don't
blame the diamonds well, and when you were talking about
all these things that had happened to her, I kind
of want to, like counter with all the terrible things
that happened to my grandmother. And she was a very
modest person who had no Hope diamond. Yeah. I mean,
I think tragic things just happen to people. It's an
unfortunate aspect of life. And it's easy to attribute those
to the presence of a thing and focus that as
(16:47):
you're the bad luck item that's causing them all. But um,
sometimes bad things just happened. And she really seemed to
love that jewel. I mean there are movies of her
wearing it that she took of herself. There photog almost
any photograph of her features it. Uh. And she actually
died the year after her daughter in n she was sixty. Uh,
(17:09):
and she had been wearing the Hope Diamond consistently for
thirty six years, and it was as a part of
her jewelry collection that it was set in the pendant form,
surrounded by the smaller stones that it's recognized for today.
So she stopped wearing it in the headpiece and began
to wear it as a pendant. And Uh, at some point,
I would actually love to do an entire episode on
Evil and Walsh mcclaim because her life was mind boggling.
(17:32):
I mean there's even an incident where she allegedly tried
to hawk the Hope Diamond for ransom money to get
the Lindbergh baby back. Uh. She just she had a
wild ride. She threw amazing parties. She was very fascinating.
So she's certainly episode worthy. But uh, for the moment,
this is where we're gonna pause, and and this first
(17:52):
part of the Hope diamond because next we'll get into
how it kind of became part of the Smithsonian collection
and the curse is allegedly on it, and some interesting
scientific study that's been done on the diamond in more
modern times. But that's it's sort of origin story. Uh.
And we'll reference back to some of those because they
(18:13):
come up in the curse discussion. Uh. So yeah, Part
two of the Hope Diamond will be coming next. I
believe you may have some listener mail. Well I do. Indeed,
this actually uh was sent to us in a message
on Facebook, and it is from our listener management, and
he says, I was really excited to see the topic
for the recent podcast on Pluto. I've always had a
(18:35):
soft spot in my heart for the little guy. When
I was ten years old, I made friends with an
elderly man on a camping trip. While all the boring
grown ups sat around talking about boring adult stuff. The
elderly man told me stories about the stars and planets
we could see that night, and then he told me
a number of rather cheesy puns, mostly about crows. I
found out on the ride home that he was actually
(18:55):
famous astronomer named Clyde Tomba. Yes, that Clyde Tomba who
to run for Stitt in case anyone listening doesn't recall,
is the person who is credited with finding Pluto. We
had a chance to hang out on a number of
other camping trips, and I made sure my parents invited
my new friend and his wife over for dinner as
often as was possible. A few years later, Clyde shared
the pictures of Voyager Twose Neptune fly by, explaining the
(19:17):
science and new discoveries to many of us, blowing our minds.
Then he told me a few more crow puns. He
was an incredibly kind, intelligent man, believed in UFOs and
love cheesy puns. I recently read that some of his
ashes were included on board the New Horizons probe, so
he'll actually get to visit his discovery in person. That's
some pretty cool stuff. Uh. And then he includes some
(19:39):
of the puns that Clyde told him. And all of
this does um fall in line with things that I
have read by Tomba's colleagues that he loved these cookie
puns and it was just a very sweet and really
sharing man like he loved to talk about his work.
Can you tell us one of the Crow funds, because
I'm going to have to get good with them otherwise
they're funny. Are you ready? Yes? What is a row's
(20:00):
favorite part of the sun the chromosphere? What is a
crow's favorite metal chrome? And then what is the crow's
favorite caveman chromagna word? Uh? So, which are so cute? Uh?
And a lot of people have are several people have
written us about the Plato episode and about our comment
(20:21):
that it's the only planet to have been demoted, and
they're like, no, no, no, there are others like series
and they mentioned some others, and I want to do
more research on it before we actually talk about that,
because there is some um controversy, it seems, or just
you know, debate. I don't know controversies the right word,
even in the astronomy community about it, uh, including like
(20:42):
I think and I'm just turning I's top of my head,
so don't quote any of this as accurate. But I
think even like the first time it was reported, the
person that discovered it thought it was a planet, that
reported it as a different heavenly body because he didn't
know that it would meet any of those criteria yet.
And so it's been a little bit confused even though
it was taught as a planet at in some in
(21:04):
the eighteen hundreds for a little while. So we've gotten
we've gotten letters for doing more research, many many, many,
many many letters. Got other possible devoted planets, many many letters. Yeah,
so we're not ignoring this. We just wanna, you know,
make sure we have low information before we start talking
about it. So that's a scoop if you would like
(21:27):
to write us. And I just love that people are
excited about astronomy and astronomy history. It's very excited about
our moded planet. Are things that super love. Uh, And
if you want to write us, you can do so
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also
connect with us on Twitter at missed in History, at
Facebook dot com, slash history class stuff, um tumbler at
(21:47):
missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and on Pinterest.
If you would like to learn a little bit more
about what we've talked about today, you can go to
our website. Search for the word diamonds and you'll get
an article called how diamonds work, And it actually does
include a section on famous diamonds that mentions the Hope diamond.
Of course, because it is super famous, so if you
would like to learn about that, or almost anything else
(22:08):
you can think of, you should do that at our website,
which is how stuff Works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com. Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly
(22:33):
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a Netflix member, you can instantly watch TV episodes and
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