Why is hope diamond blue

It is said that Tavernier came down with a raging fever soon after stealing the diamond and soon after passed away. However, other reports show that he lived until the old age of Shortly after this, he fell out of favour with the king and was banished from France and then sentenced to life imprisonment.

Fouquet spent 15 years in the fortress of Pignerol. She was a temporary wearer of the supposedly cursed diamond and died soon after. The diamond was stolen during the French revolution and re-cut. Wilhelm Fals was a Dutch jeweller who was responsible for cutting the carat diamond to the carat Blue Hope Diamond we see today. After it was cut, he suffered ill fate when his son allegedly stole the diamond, murdered his father and then took his own life.

It reappeared in the catalogue of a gem collection owned by a London banking family called Hope in Simon Maoncharides was a Greek merchant who owned the diamond and resold it in to Pierre Cartier. He drove his car over a cliff.

Her ill fate began when her mother-in-law died, and her son died at the age of nine. Her husband left her for another woman and later died in a psychiatric hospital. Her daughter died of a drug overdose, and Evalyn eventually had to sell her newspaper, The Washington Post. She died owing huge debts. McLean, Virginia is named after the family. They exemplified the later years of the Gilded Age, using, flaunting, and even, some would say, wasting their gigantic fortune on over-the-top conspicuous consumption.

Evalyn wore the diamond at extravagant parties, paraded the diamond around Washington, and made much of it publicly, until It was then that her year-old son, Vinson, was struck down and killed by a car near their Washington, DC, estate.

It was as if all the negative energy that was locked inside the uncut diamond had now been unleashed upon its possessors because of the cutting. The story of the curse appealed to the public and resonated with other curse stories of the era about the Titanic and Egyptian mummies. The idea was that somehow the wealthy, who had flaunted their wealth by obtaining the treasurers of others, were now getting their comeuppance from higher supernatural powers.

The curse story was only amplified by ensuing events. Ned McLean went insane, and the family lost the Washington Post in bankruptcy, despite Evalyn trying to use the Hope Diamond as collateral for a loan.

The remaining money was to be used for a possible ransom. Learn more about examples of American style. Seeing or holding it was the prize for buying a raffle ticket or attending a benefit. In , another tragedy struck. Evalyn died in , and the estate sold the Hope Diamond to Harry Winston. A decade later, the diamond came to the Smithsonian. When it did, it was given an acquisition number, just like every other Smithsonian object.

The Hope Diamond is It came with the setting crafted by Cartier and 16 The Hope Diamond itself weighs Since that time, curators at the Smithsonian, chiefly Jeff Post, have conducted numerous scientific studies of the diamond.

In essence, the gem is a biopsy of the earth. And the curse? For the Smithsonian, the Hope Diamond has obviously been a source of good luck. Following Winston, Mrs. John Logan donated the carat Logan Sapphire.

Leonard and Victoria Wilkinson gave the carat Victoria Transvaal diamond; Janet Annenberg Hooker gave a large emerald and suite of yellow diamonds, and so on. Smithsonian mineralogist George Switzer is credited with persuading jeweler Harry Winston to donate the Hope Diamond for a proposed national gem collection to be housed at the National Museum of Natural History. On November 10, , Winston acquiesced, sending it through U.

The Hope Diamond is now enshrined in the redesigned Harry Winston Gallery at the Smithsonian, delighting and intriguing millions annually. And that brown paper box it came in? The Hope Diamond is thought to be cursed as it was stolen from a Sita idol in India. The original thief was torn to pieces by dogs and everyone else who has been involved with the diamond met horrible deaths and bad luck. Currently the Hope Diamond is worth around million dollars. Evalyn and Ned McLean depart on a worldwide honeymoon trip.

While in Paris, Evalyn buys the Star of East, a The McLean family moves to their new country estate, called "Friendship," where Evalyn hosts many extravagant parties for Washington society. Evalyn's son, Vinson, is hit by an automobile in front of his home and dies shortly thereafter.

May Yohe publishes a fanciful account of the diamond's "dark past" in her book, The Mystery of the Hope Diamond.