August 14, 2013 • 22 mins
The Hope Diamond is well traveled, but is it cursed? Does it have mystical powers? Why does it glow red after exposure to UV light? Analysis of the curse stories and chemical composition of the gem yield interesting results.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetop
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly cry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today we
are picking up where we left off with the Hope Diamond.
So to recamp, Hope diamond is a giant blue diamond
(00:25):
the sizeable walnut. Yes, so giant and walnut may not
go together in your head, but in terms of diamonds,
it's quite sizeable. Uh. It has passed through the hands
of many people through the years. At first came into
uh the Western record anyway, in the sixteen hundreds. It
was owned by the Sun King, King Lely the fourteenth
(00:46):
of France, as well as Team Lee the fifteenth and sixteenth,
and then it vanished for a bit, showed up in London. UH,
was passed through King George the fourth of England and
then in to the Hope family, who then sold it off.
It changed chance a few more times and ended up
with Evelyn Walsh McClain, who was an American heiress and
(01:09):
a little bit of a an eccentric in the way
that most heiresses seemed to be in history. And then uh,
where we get to is the end of her life.
We ended UH part one with her passing away, and
when she passed away, which was in her estate in
(01:29):
a tale that's all too familiar, particularly in relation to
the Hope Diamond, needed to be liquidated to cover her debts. UH.
And in nineteen forty nine, Harry Winston, Incorporated of New
York City, the famous Harry Winston Jewelers, bought the entirety
of Mrs McLean's jewelry collection. From the time he purchased
the collection until late nineteen fifty eight, Harry Winston toured
(01:51):
the Hope Diamond around the globe, often for charity, and
then on November tenth of ninety eight, Harry Winston donated
the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian, where it has been
ever since. That is where I saw it when I was,
or most people would. When I think if my parents
had maybe not my parents, I think my grandparents were
the bigger hypers of the Hope Diamond, and I think
(02:15):
if they had talked about its history rather than its size,
I might have been less underwhelmed. When I actually saw it. Yeah,
I was kind of like, it's a blue rock, but
it's a famous and important blue rock spanning centuries of history,
The famous gem has actually left the Smithsonian on several occasions.
(02:36):
In nineteen sixty two, it was on display at the
Louver for one month as part of its ten Centuries
of French Jewelry exhibit, and in nineteen sixty five it
was shown in Johannesburg, South Africa in the rand Easter Show.
In nineteen eighty four, Harry Winston Inc. Borrowed the diamond
for their fiftieth anniversary celebration and in it actually went
(03:00):
back to Harry Winston Inc. Again, this time for restoration
and for cleaning. In the diamond moved into a new
exhibit at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution,
the new Harry Winston Room in the Hall of Geology.
And in uh the Hope Diamond was actually placed into
(03:21):
a new temporary setting courtesy of Harry Winston Inc. It
was part of an anniversary celebration for the diamond, and
it was called the Embracing Hope Setting and it was
actually chosen by popular vote. They had I think they
narrowed it down to three designs and then let the
general population vote on it, and that was the one
that they selected. So that was the temporary setting for it.
(03:45):
The diamond is one of the most visited museum exhibits
in the world, and it's displayed behind bullet and bomb
proof glass. Its value is roughly three and fifty million dollars. Yeah,
that's a a lot of greenbacks. But one of the
main things we're going to talk about on this part
two episode is the curse of the Hope Diamond. As
(04:08):
with many famous jewels in history, this one has a
curse attributed to it. Uh. But as we'll see, a
lot of the things that people say are the cause
of the diamond are really either not the cause of
the diamond or didn't even happen. Uh. So we'll start
with this um and as we mentioned, the curse schumers
(04:30):
really went into overdrive in the early twentieth century. Here
are a few of the common, untrue tales of the curse.
There's one story that says that the explorer who discovered
the diamonds stole it from a Hindu temple. In this
version of the story, this discoverer was later ripped apart
by dogs and the diamond was cursed as a result.
(04:52):
And some versions of this story that discover is John
Baptiste Taverner, but in others it's some other explorer who
later gave it to Tavernier. We know that Tavernier made
it back to France safe and sound, not dismembered by dogs,
and continued to sell gems. He did write in his
(05:12):
travel journal of a local jeweler in India's extracting a
diamond from an idol's eye and being punished for it,
which reminds us of Indiana, Joe. Yeah, so it's possible
that that description that he made in his travel journal
somehow got through, you know, word of mouth. Discussion of
it turned into the story of how he got the diamond,
(05:32):
but that's never been substantiated at all. Uh, Louis the
fourteenth death of gang Green is attributed to the diamond.
That's kind of good. Some people attribute the bad fortune
of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette's rein to their
possession of the French Blue. Yeah, there's even a story
of Marie Antoinette wore this diamond and look what happened
(05:55):
to her. But in fact it still would have been
in that um order of the Golden Fleece setting, which
was really for men and for the keen to wear
for ceremonial things, so it's actually unlikely that she ever
wore it. Um. So again, uh, there are many things
that they possessed that she could say were there bad luck,
(06:17):
But they possessed silverware, place, all the things. Uh. Henry
Philip Hope and his family certainly had an assortment of
troubles while the diamond was in their possession, but again, uh,
some of those things seem like they probably would have
happened anyway, and presumably they had troubles at other times too. Yeah,
(06:37):
I mean, it's kind of one of those things where
they it was in the family for a long time.
There was a lot of debt and poor money management,
But that to me suggests that they just weren't great
with keeping their hands on their money or managing it
very well, less so than anything else. Well, and every
time I hear these stories, I kind of just want
to rattle off terrible things that have happened to people
(06:58):
who are not actually of a walnut sized blue diamonds. Yeah,
and I mean there literally listen listen lists that you
can find of things that people say must be because
of the Hope diamonds and the curse that it carries. Uh.
But what's really interesting is that when you really dive
in and you look for where all of these rumors
(07:20):
really came from, there are actually two main sources, one
of which may surprise you. One is may Yo Way,
the wife of Francis Thomas Hope, one of the many
people who have sold the diamonds to cover debts. She
wrote many accounts of the diamonds curse, including her own
misfortunes and unhappiness after having worn it. She even made
(07:41):
a Hollywood movie about the curse. Yeah, and there's actually
some debate about whether she did actually ever wear it.
The other person and this one's quite fun if you
remember how uh Evelyn McLean came into possession of the diamonds.
She purchased it from Pierre Cartier. And as we know,
(08:01):
Cardier very famous name in high end luxury goods. Uh.
And it appears that Pierre Cardier was actually one of
the people who really stirred this rumor pot uh. It
said that he was a master salesman and that he
actually knew that the legends and mystery attached to the
diamond would really pique Evelyn Walsh McLean's interest. As a buyer.
(08:22):
And as we mentioned in the first episode on this
she talked about in her autobiography, you know, kind of
this sense of like mystery and and the diamond staring
back at her and her joining her fate to it
when she put it around her neck, for good or bad.
And so clearly those stories worked on her right well.
(08:43):
And both of these people who seemed to be the
two main sources of all these rumors had a vested
interest in telling a good story. Yeah, there was profit
to be made from it. Uh. And of course that
doesn't account for the ill fortunes that befell McLean while
she owned the diamond. But as we said in the
first part of this story, she didn't give that much credence.
(09:05):
She basically said, you know, bad things happen to people.
They probably would happen to me whether I had this
diamond or not. It's not the diamond. Even the mailman
who delivered the diamond to the Smithsonian, because yes, it
was sent in the mail James Todd crushed his leg
in a truck accident, had head injuries from a car accident,
and then had his house burned to the ground. Yes,
(09:28):
so people that had already bought into the curse thing.
You know, they're just adding that to the list of
the catalog of obvious curse support for it. Uh. And
some people have even attributed the troubles of the United
States to the Hope Diamond and its presence in the Smithsonian.
The museum actually continues to receive letters about the curse
(09:49):
that blame the Hope Diamond for basically any problem we've
ever had, I mean, terrorist attacks, Hope Diamond, economy issues,
Hope diamond. They're literally getting constant complaints saying they need
to get rid of this this item in their collection
because it's bringing bad fortune to the country. Well, and
then it does seemed to be a trend of people
with a diamond having debt issues. They do, although part
(10:11):
of me thinks there's like a cause and effect element there.
I think more the person that's going to spend a
whole lot of money on a piece of jewelry is right,
maybe not the most prudent spender to begin with. If
you are the sort of person who will buy a giant,
rare blue diamond, maybe you have other things going on. Yeah,
(10:32):
and there is one account I just want to mention
as a side note that uh, when McLean bought the
piece from Cardier, there was a deal that if nothing
bad happened to her in the first six months, she
would keep it, but if something bad did happen and
it was in fact cursed, she would get her money back. Uh.
(10:53):
But in any case, she kept it for more than
three decades. So yeah, and more at almost daily, I mean,
just st around the house. Well, and so part of
me is like, man, that is so silly. And then
part of me also knows that, Like, if I was
trying to buy a house and someone told me that
the house was haunted, I might not want it anymore,
(11:16):
even though I know that's completely irrational. I know it's irrational,
and I would still want it more, I thay. So
if somebody ever offers me a haunted house, I will
sell it to you. Maybe, but I already have a
house I really couldn't afford to I don't thay. Uh.
But in the more modern era, there have been some
(11:37):
really interesting things going on with the Hope Diamond that
have nothing to do with curses and only to do
with science. No, we're not. We're not debunking curses with
science or doing cool other stuff. Yeah, in two thousand five. So,
as we mentioned there, in all of the various stories
of this diamond resurfacing, there was not usually attribution of
(11:58):
like oh I purchased it from this person for the
sum of money. It just kind of shows up in
people's catalogs of things that they have, and when it
left France as the French Blue, it vanished. And then
two decades later this similarly colored but smaller diamond appeared
in London. And so there had always been this almost
(12:19):
a presumption I think on the part of a lot
of historians that yes, that is the same piece, but
it was just that it wasn't supported by anything but
circumstantial evidence. But that changed in two thousand five. That's
when a research team was able to use computer analysis
to determine that the Hope diamond was indeed part of
what had been the French Blue, so it confirmed its lineage.
(12:41):
The team worked from detailed sketches of the jewel that
were made when it was part of the French Royal collection.
Then Smithsonian Gem curator Jeffrey Post and his team were
able to assemble computer models of the stone, it it's
eighteenth century state, and see the Hope diamond would have
nested into it perfectly in one orientation. In an interview
(13:03):
with the Associated Press, post said, it turns out it
actually fits perfectly in only one way. But at that orientation,
when you saw how it fit, you could see why
it was cut the way it is. They cut the
corners off the French Blue, changed slightly the angle of
the bottom facets, and that produced the Hope Diamond. Uh.
And then in two thousand and eight of French research
(13:24):
team did a similar analysis using scanners and lasers on
a lead copy of the French Blue that was found
in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. There's
one name that here as well, but this is the
Parisian one, and working with measurements from the Smithsonian of
the Hope Diamond for comparison. So the two museums were
working in conjunction. Uh, they came to the same conclusion.
(13:45):
It really just bolstered the earlier findings that in fact,
this diamond hadn't been a part of this bigger diamond,
and they were able to really kind of identify how
it had been cut down, which is really cool. My
love how there's a lead copy of it. Yeah, that
was just sitting in there a long time and was like, hey,
let's compare these things in. A team of scientists at
(14:08):
the Natural History Museum drilled into the Hope diamond to
remove atoms from it to study it. Drilled may sound scary,
but the crater created by the eye on being used
in the procedure was only ten ang strums deep. That's
just a hair more than four billions of an inch. Yeah,
it was a very precise, uh procedure that was done,
(14:30):
and it the way it's described, it's like they hit
it with this eye on beam and then there's like
a vacuum effect of the atoms that get kicked up
being pulled into their receptacle for analysis. And uh, those
initial results that they got from it indicated the presence
of carbon hydrogen, possibly nitrogen, and boron, which they had
(14:52):
already suspected because the boron is credited as giving the
diamond its blue hue. And what's interesting is that it's
actually not uniform a minutes distribution throughout the diamond, which
means that the Hope diamond is actually multiple shades of blues.
But to the naked eye it looks quite uniform when
exposed to UV light, the diamond exhibits a mysterious red
(15:14):
glow when the light is extinguished. That's because when exposed
to you, if you light the boron and nitrogen and
the diamond interact in a way that produces sposeporesceence. The
sposeporessence is expressed in the form of a red glue. Yeah,
and it glows that way for several minutes. It doesn't
just like you know when you turn off the UVY light,
(15:34):
It doesn't just glow slowly quickly and burn right out.
It really holds the glow for a little while. And
that's one of those things that when um scientists were
first announcing that they had discovered that it glowed red
and other blue diamonds do the same thing, uh that
people attributed it back to the curse again, like, oh,
it's got mystical powers. It's glowing red because it's haunted,
(15:55):
but in fact it's um uh born and nitrogen interacting
with them the gym. And I think one of the
really fun notes that came out of this while I
was doing research is that any time any of these
scientific tests are being done, it's usually in the dead
of night, like when the museum's closed, they have to
pull an all nighter to take it off display and
(16:18):
do these things like drill into it carefully or take
it out of its setting. Uh. And as Jeffrey Post,
who he mentioned earlier, he's the geologist and curator at
the National Museum. He told Kenneth Chang of The New
York Times quote, the public gets really surly when the
Hope Diamond is not there on public display. So that's
why they have to vary very carefully, uh, select their
(16:38):
times when they can work on it. When they know
that they have is not surprised me at all. Yeah,
and so that actually slows some of the scientific research
because they have to rush it back to display before
the museum opens in the morning. Now I'm imagining like
Harry docents being by people who came just to see
the Hope Diamond. Yeah. I mean, as we said, it
is one of the most visited museum exhibits in the
(17:01):
entire world. Like going to see the Mona Lisa, and
the Mona Lisa's on display that day, there's like a
big sign that's like part in our progress or like seriously,
I came all the way to France. Yeah, because people
do make um trips just to see that one thing.
I mean, that's not part of And I feel like
I could be remembering this wrong. I feel like that
(17:21):
when I saw the Hope Diamond as a child, that
it was a trip, a family trip to Washington, d C.
And I feel like it had just returned from that
nine eighties being away, Like there was a big promotion
around the Hope Diamond being back. Kind ready was really
excited about it. Yeah, they have to be very anytime
it is going to leave or go off display for
(17:43):
any period of time, they really have to message it early,
very clearly. Not here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you'll see
on the Smithsonian website. Anytime any really any of their
big exhibits are going to come down, there's usually like
a big alert this thing is not going to be
on public display for the following times. Uh yeah, I
(18:04):
think as you can imagine. Yeah, I think the last
time that I was in uh d C. And went
to the Smithsonian, I think I thought about going to
see it and instead I look that dinosaurs. See. I
think I've done that many times and I'm overdue. So
I need to make another trip there and go see it. So, yeah,
whether you look at the hope I'm in from a
(18:24):
historic angle because it has traveled through uh, the pages
of history for hundreds of years, or the curse angle,
of which it's there's a lot to talk about there,
whether you believe in curses or not. It's interesting how
people want to attribute every bad thing that happens to
this diamond or the scientific angle. Uh. It's a really
(18:45):
unique and entrancing gym, and it's no wonder everyone's heard
about it, even if the stories have kind of gotten
jumbled at times along the way. Um. But I think
what's really interesting is that we're probably going to get
a lot more scientific research done in the next several years. Again,
it's slow going because they have to do it in
the middle of the night. Uh, but I know that
they kind of the curators there kind of look at
(19:08):
it as almost a portal into geological history because it
has been around for so long. So since we've confirmed
but it's from France and was stolen from France, or
any talk of it returning France. No. In fact, when
that French team published their uh thing, please don't give
(19:29):
it back it's cursed. No, it wasn't even that they
were like it's really unlikely. You know, it's been at
the Smithsonian for so long, and you know there's a
very cooperative trust amongst the museums. Anyway, Uh, it doesn't
seem like there's any big effort or desire to chase
that down because even if it was stolen from the
French monarchy or the you know, revolutionary government, at that point,
(19:54):
it had been so long ago. And remember it didn't
surface again in London until after the Statute of limitations
on the theft would have run out convenient. So yeah,
so it's um, it's a really probably not uh an
issue worth fighting over or even you know, starting the
paperwork would be probably a train wreck of a of
(20:16):
man hours, So not really likely. I would be shocked
if at some point the French guvernment said give me that,
give that back its hours side want the pretty? Do
you also have some? Most I do what I'm over
due to read this one. This one comes from our
listener Christopher, who says, greetings for the land of the
Rising Sun. It's a postcard, says, I am in the
(20:38):
Navy stationed in Japan and have listened to all of
your episodes during the long days at sea. I appreciate
the research on each topic. Recently, I listened to several
episodes while hiking to the top of Mount Fuji. That
the good work. I just wanted to read that because
thank you for your service, Christopher. We appreciate it an
awful lot. And I like knowing that you know it's
(20:59):
been listen to the Mount Fuji and that's see and
let's see, and it's a really beautiful picture of Mount Fuji.
It's a little weather beaten because coming through the postal service,
postcards don't always get treated with tender, loving gear. Even
once they get into our building, they're not always student.
There are many points along the path that things can
(21:20):
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(21:41):
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(22:07):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetop
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly cry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today we
are picking up where we left off with the Hope Diamond.
So to recamp, Hope diamond is a giant blue diamond
(00:25):
the sizeable walnut. Yes, so giant and walnut may not
go together in your head, but in terms of diamonds,
it's quite sizeable. Uh. It has passed through the hands
of many people through the years. At first came into
uh the Western record anyway, in the sixteen hundreds. It
was owned by the Sun King, King Lely the fourteenth
(00:46):
of France, as well as Team Lee the fifteenth and sixteenth,
and then it vanished for a bit, showed up in London. UH,
was passed through King George the fourth of England and
then in to the Hope family, who then sold it off.
It changed chance a few more times and ended up
with Evelyn Walsh McClain, who was an American heiress and
(01:09):
a little bit of a an eccentric in the way
that most heiresses seemed to be in history. And then uh,
where we get to is the end of her life.
We ended UH part one with her passing away, and
when she passed away, which was in her estate in
(01:29):
a tale that's all too familiar, particularly in relation to
the Hope Diamond, needed to be liquidated to cover her debts. UH.
And in nineteen forty nine, Harry Winston, Incorporated of New
York City, the famous Harry Winston Jewelers, bought the entirety
of Mrs McLean's jewelry collection. From the time he purchased
the collection until late nineteen fifty eight, Harry Winston toured
(01:51):
the Hope Diamond around the globe, often for charity, and
then on November tenth of ninety eight, Harry Winston donated
the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian, where it has been
ever since. That is where I saw it when I was,
or most people would. When I think if my parents
had maybe not my parents, I think my grandparents were
the bigger hypers of the Hope Diamond, and I think
(02:15):
if they had talked about its history rather than its size,
I might have been less underwhelmed. When I actually saw it. Yeah,
I was kind of like, it's a blue rock, but
it's a famous and important blue rock spanning centuries of history,
The famous gem has actually left the Smithsonian on several occasions.
(02:36):
In nineteen sixty two, it was on display at the
Louver for one month as part of its ten Centuries
of French Jewelry exhibit, and in nineteen sixty five it
was shown in Johannesburg, South Africa in the rand Easter Show.
In nineteen eighty four, Harry Winston Inc. Borrowed the diamond
for their fiftieth anniversary celebration and in it actually went
(03:00):
back to Harry Winston Inc. Again, this time for restoration
and for cleaning. In the diamond moved into a new
exhibit at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution,
the new Harry Winston Room in the Hall of Geology.
And in uh the Hope Diamond was actually placed into
(03:21):
a new temporary setting courtesy of Harry Winston Inc. It
was part of an anniversary celebration for the diamond, and
it was called the Embracing Hope Setting and it was
actually chosen by popular vote. They had I think they
narrowed it down to three designs and then let the
general population vote on it, and that was the one
that they selected. So that was the temporary setting for it.
(03:45):
The diamond is one of the most visited museum exhibits
in the world, and it's displayed behind bullet and bomb
proof glass. Its value is roughly three and fifty million dollars. Yeah,
that's a a lot of greenbacks. But one of the
main things we're going to talk about on this part
two episode is the curse of the Hope Diamond. As
(04:08):
with many famous jewels in history, this one has a
curse attributed to it. Uh. But as we'll see, a
lot of the things that people say are the cause
of the diamond are really either not the cause of
the diamond or didn't even happen. Uh. So we'll start
with this um and as we mentioned, the curse schumers
(04:30):
really went into overdrive in the early twentieth century. Here
are a few of the common, untrue tales of the curse.
There's one story that says that the explorer who discovered
the diamonds stole it from a Hindu temple. In this
version of the story, this discoverer was later ripped apart
by dogs and the diamond was cursed as a result.
(04:52):
And some versions of this story that discover is John
Baptiste Taverner, but in others it's some other explorer who
later gave it to Tavernier. We know that Tavernier made
it back to France safe and sound, not dismembered by dogs,
and continued to sell gems. He did write in his
(05:12):
travel journal of a local jeweler in India's extracting a
diamond from an idol's eye and being punished for it,
which reminds us of Indiana, Joe. Yeah, so it's possible
that that description that he made in his travel journal
somehow got through, you know, word of mouth. Discussion of
it turned into the story of how he got the diamond,
(05:32):
but that's never been substantiated at all. Uh, Louis the
fourteenth death of gang Green is attributed to the diamond.
That's kind of good. Some people attribute the bad fortune
of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette's rein to their
possession of the French Blue. Yeah, there's even a story
of Marie Antoinette wore this diamond and look what happened
(05:55):
to her. But in fact it still would have been
in that um order of the Golden Fleece setting, which
was really for men and for the keen to wear
for ceremonial things, so it's actually unlikely that she ever
wore it. Um. So again, uh, there are many things
that they possessed that she could say were there bad luck,
(06:17):
But they possessed silverware, place, all the things. Uh. Henry
Philip Hope and his family certainly had an assortment of
troubles while the diamond was in their possession, but again, uh,
some of those things seem like they probably would have
happened anyway, and presumably they had troubles at other times too. Yeah,
(06:37):
I mean, it's kind of one of those things where
they it was in the family for a long time.
There was a lot of debt and poor money management,
But that to me suggests that they just weren't great
with keeping their hands on their money or managing it
very well, less so than anything else. Well, and every
time I hear these stories, I kind of just want
to rattle off terrible things that have happened to people
(06:58):
who are not actually of a walnut sized blue diamonds. Yeah,
and I mean there literally listen listen lists that you
can find of things that people say must be because
of the Hope diamonds and the curse that it carries. Uh.
But what's really interesting is that when you really dive
in and you look for where all of these rumors
(07:20):
really came from, there are actually two main sources, one
of which may surprise you. One is may Yo Way,
the wife of Francis Thomas Hope, one of the many
people who have sold the diamonds to cover debts. She
wrote many accounts of the diamonds curse, including her own
misfortunes and unhappiness after having worn it. She even made
(07:41):
a Hollywood movie about the curse. Yeah, and there's actually
some debate about whether she did actually ever wear it.
The other person and this one's quite fun if you
remember how uh Evelyn McLean came into possession of the diamonds.
She purchased it from Pierre Cartier. And as we know,
(08:01):
Cardier very famous name in high end luxury goods. Uh.
And it appears that Pierre Cardier was actually one of
the people who really stirred this rumor pot uh. It
said that he was a master salesman and that he
actually knew that the legends and mystery attached to the
diamond would really pique Evelyn Walsh McLean's interest. As a buyer.
(08:22):
And as we mentioned in the first episode on this
she talked about in her autobiography, you know, kind of
this sense of like mystery and and the diamond staring
back at her and her joining her fate to it
when she put it around her neck, for good or bad.
And so clearly those stories worked on her right well.
(08:43):
And both of these people who seemed to be the
two main sources of all these rumors had a vested
interest in telling a good story. Yeah, there was profit
to be made from it. Uh. And of course that
doesn't account for the ill fortunes that befell McLean while
she owned the diamond. But as we said in the
first part of this story, she didn't give that much credence.
(09:05):
She basically said, you know, bad things happen to people.
They probably would happen to me whether I had this
diamond or not. It's not the diamond. Even the mailman
who delivered the diamond to the Smithsonian, because yes, it
was sent in the mail James Todd crushed his leg
in a truck accident, had head injuries from a car accident,
and then had his house burned to the ground. Yes,
(09:28):
so people that had already bought into the curse thing.
You know, they're just adding that to the list of
the catalog of obvious curse support for it. Uh. And
some people have even attributed the troubles of the United
States to the Hope Diamond and its presence in the Smithsonian.
The museum actually continues to receive letters about the curse
(09:49):
that blame the Hope Diamond for basically any problem we've
ever had, I mean, terrorist attacks, Hope Diamond, economy issues,
Hope diamond. They're literally getting constant complaints saying they need
to get rid of this this item in their collection
because it's bringing bad fortune to the country. Well, and
then it does seemed to be a trend of people
with a diamond having debt issues. They do, although part
(10:11):
of me thinks there's like a cause and effect element there.
I think more the person that's going to spend a
whole lot of money on a piece of jewelry is right,
maybe not the most prudent spender to begin with. If
you are the sort of person who will buy a giant,
rare blue diamond, maybe you have other things going on. Yeah,
(10:32):
and there is one account I just want to mention
as a side note that uh, when McLean bought the
piece from Cardier, there was a deal that if nothing
bad happened to her in the first six months, she
would keep it, but if something bad did happen and
it was in fact cursed, she would get her money back. Uh.
(10:53):
But in any case, she kept it for more than
three decades. So yeah, and more at almost daily, I mean,
just st around the house. Well, and so part of
me is like, man, that is so silly. And then
part of me also knows that, Like, if I was
trying to buy a house and someone told me that
the house was haunted, I might not want it anymore,
(11:16):
even though I know that's completely irrational. I know it's irrational,
and I would still want it more, I thay. So
if somebody ever offers me a haunted house, I will
sell it to you. Maybe, but I already have a
house I really couldn't afford to I don't thay. Uh.
But in the more modern era, there have been some
(11:37):
really interesting things going on with the Hope Diamond that
have nothing to do with curses and only to do
with science. No, we're not. We're not debunking curses with
science or doing cool other stuff. Yeah, in two thousand five. So,
as we mentioned there, in all of the various stories
of this diamond resurfacing, there was not usually attribution of
(11:58):
like oh I purchased it from this person for the
sum of money. It just kind of shows up in
people's catalogs of things that they have, and when it
left France as the French Blue, it vanished. And then
two decades later this similarly colored but smaller diamond appeared
in London. And so there had always been this almost
(12:19):
a presumption I think on the part of a lot
of historians that yes, that is the same piece, but
it was just that it wasn't supported by anything but
circumstantial evidence. But that changed in two thousand five. That's
when a research team was able to use computer analysis
to determine that the Hope diamond was indeed part of
what had been the French Blue, so it confirmed its lineage.
(12:41):
The team worked from detailed sketches of the jewel that
were made when it was part of the French Royal collection.
Then Smithsonian Gem curator Jeffrey Post and his team were
able to assemble computer models of the stone, it it's
eighteenth century state, and see the Hope diamond would have
nested into it perfectly in one orientation. In an interview
(13:03):
with the Associated Press, post said, it turns out it
actually fits perfectly in only one way. But at that orientation,
when you saw how it fit, you could see why
it was cut the way it is. They cut the
corners off the French Blue, changed slightly the angle of
the bottom facets, and that produced the Hope Diamond. Uh.
And then in two thousand and eight of French research
(13:24):
team did a similar analysis using scanners and lasers on
a lead copy of the French Blue that was found
in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. There's
one name that here as well, but this is the
Parisian one, and working with measurements from the Smithsonian of
the Hope Diamond for comparison. So the two museums were
working in conjunction. Uh, they came to the same conclusion.
(13:45):
It really just bolstered the earlier findings that in fact,
this diamond hadn't been a part of this bigger diamond,
and they were able to really kind of identify how
it had been cut down, which is really cool. My
love how there's a lead copy of it. Yeah, that
was just sitting in there a long time and was like, hey,
let's compare these things in. A team of scientists at
(14:08):
the Natural History Museum drilled into the Hope diamond to
remove atoms from it to study it. Drilled may sound scary,
but the crater created by the eye on being used
in the procedure was only ten ang strums deep. That's
just a hair more than four billions of an inch. Yeah,
it was a very precise, uh procedure that was done,
(14:30):
and it the way it's described, it's like they hit
it with this eye on beam and then there's like
a vacuum effect of the atoms that get kicked up
being pulled into their receptacle for analysis. And uh, those
initial results that they got from it indicated the presence
of carbon hydrogen, possibly nitrogen, and boron, which they had
(14:52):
already suspected because the boron is credited as giving the
diamond its blue hue. And what's interesting is that it's
actually not uniform a minutes distribution throughout the diamond, which
means that the Hope diamond is actually multiple shades of blues.
But to the naked eye it looks quite uniform when
exposed to UV light, the diamond exhibits a mysterious red
(15:14):
glow when the light is extinguished. That's because when exposed
to you, if you light the boron and nitrogen and
the diamond interact in a way that produces sposeporesceence. The
sposeporessence is expressed in the form of a red glue. Yeah,
and it glows that way for several minutes. It doesn't
just like you know when you turn off the UVY light,
(15:34):
It doesn't just glow slowly quickly and burn right out.
It really holds the glow for a little while. And
that's one of those things that when um scientists were
first announcing that they had discovered that it glowed red
and other blue diamonds do the same thing, uh that
people attributed it back to the curse again, like, oh,
it's got mystical powers. It's glowing red because it's haunted,
(15:55):
but in fact it's um uh born and nitrogen interacting
with them the gym. And I think one of the
really fun notes that came out of this while I
was doing research is that any time any of these
scientific tests are being done, it's usually in the dead
of night, like when the museum's closed, they have to
pull an all nighter to take it off display and
(16:18):
do these things like drill into it carefully or take
it out of its setting. Uh. And as Jeffrey Post,
who he mentioned earlier, he's the geologist and curator at
the National Museum. He told Kenneth Chang of The New
York Times quote, the public gets really surly when the
Hope Diamond is not there on public display. So that's
why they have to vary very carefully, uh, select their
(16:38):
times when they can work on it. When they know
that they have is not surprised me at all. Yeah,
and so that actually slows some of the scientific research
because they have to rush it back to display before
the museum opens in the morning. Now I'm imagining like
Harry docents being by people who came just to see
the Hope Diamond. Yeah. I mean, as we said, it
is one of the most visited museum exhibits in the
(17:01):
entire world. Like going to see the Mona Lisa, and
the Mona Lisa's on display that day, there's like a
big sign that's like part in our progress or like seriously,
I came all the way to France. Yeah, because people
do make um trips just to see that one thing.
I mean, that's not part of And I feel like
I could be remembering this wrong. I feel like that
(17:21):
when I saw the Hope Diamond as a child, that
it was a trip, a family trip to Washington, d C.
And I feel like it had just returned from that
nine eighties being away, Like there was a big promotion
around the Hope Diamond being back. Kind ready was really
excited about it. Yeah, they have to be very anytime
it is going to leave or go off display for
(17:43):
any period of time, they really have to message it early,
very clearly. Not here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you'll see
on the Smithsonian website. Anytime any really any of their
big exhibits are going to come down, there's usually like
a big alert this thing is not going to be
on public display for the following times. Uh yeah, I
(18:04):
think as you can imagine. Yeah, I think the last
time that I was in uh d C. And went
to the Smithsonian, I think I thought about going to
see it and instead I look that dinosaurs. See. I
think I've done that many times and I'm overdue. So
I need to make another trip there and go see it. So, yeah,
whether you look at the hope I'm in from a
(18:24):
historic angle because it has traveled through uh, the pages
of history for hundreds of years, or the curse angle,
of which it's there's a lot to talk about there,
whether you believe in curses or not. It's interesting how
people want to attribute every bad thing that happens to
this diamond or the scientific angle. Uh. It's a really
(18:45):
unique and entrancing gym, and it's no wonder everyone's heard
about it, even if the stories have kind of gotten
jumbled at times along the way. Um. But I think
what's really interesting is that we're probably going to get
a lot more scientific research done in the next several years. Again,
it's slow going because they have to do it in
the middle of the night. Uh, but I know that
they kind of the curators there kind of look at
(19:08):
it as almost a portal into geological history because it
has been around for so long. So since we've confirmed
but it's from France and was stolen from France, or
any talk of it returning France. No. In fact, when
that French team published their uh thing, please don't give
(19:29):
it back it's cursed. No, it wasn't even that they
were like it's really unlikely. You know, it's been at
the Smithsonian for so long, and you know there's a
very cooperative trust amongst the museums. Anyway, Uh, it doesn't
seem like there's any big effort or desire to chase
that down because even if it was stolen from the
French monarchy or the you know, revolutionary government, at that point,
(19:54):
it had been so long ago. And remember it didn't
surface again in London until after the Statute of limitations
on the theft would have run out convenient. So yeah,
so it's um, it's a really probably not uh an
issue worth fighting over or even you know, starting the
paperwork would be probably a train wreck of a of
(20:16):
man hours, So not really likely. I would be shocked
if at some point the French guvernment said give me that,
give that back its hours side want the pretty? Do
you also have some? Most I do what I'm over
due to read this one. This one comes from our
listener Christopher, who says, greetings for the land of the
Rising Sun. It's a postcard, says, I am in the
(20:38):
Navy stationed in Japan and have listened to all of
your episodes during the long days at sea. I appreciate
the research on each topic. Recently, I listened to several
episodes while hiking to the top of Mount Fuji. That
the good work. I just wanted to read that because
thank you for your service, Christopher. We appreciate it an
awful lot. And I like knowing that you know it's
(20:59):
been listen to the Mount Fuji and that's see and
let's see, and it's a really beautiful picture of Mount Fuji.
It's a little weather beaten because coming through the postal service,
postcards don't always get treated with tender, loving gear. Even
once they get into our building, they're not always student.
There are many points along the path that things can
(21:20):
really meet. A rough lot of sporting has to have
rough activity. So if you would like to write to us,
you can do so in History podcast that discovery dot com.
You can connect with us on Twitter at misst in
history or on Facebook dot com slash history class Stuff.
You can also visit us at missing history dot tumbler
dot com, or on Pinterest, where we have a board
(21:41):
full of historical things to behold. If you would like
to learn more about what we talked about today, you
can go to our website and type in the word
curses in the search bar and you will get an
article called ten famous curses and unfortunately the Hope diamond
curse is not included, but many others are uh and
you can also research almost anything else you would like
in our website, which is how stuff works dot com.
(22:07):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Audible dot com is
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