Discovery.Famous.Diamonds.

bubbling up from deep within the earth they are nature's enigma lumps of carbon transformed over billions of years of intense pressure and heat into priceless treasure diamonds are a girl's best friend this of beautiful diamonds have always captivated humankind we marvel at the stars shining in diamonds borrowed from the world's most exclusive jewelers and every day miners filter through tons of ore hoping to hit the jackpot the thrill of finding a diamond even a small one is really is really something fantastic every diamond sparkles but only a select few become the stuff of legends these are the diamonds men have killed and died for pass through the centuries from Sultan's to swindlers they've sparked curses and crowned Queens inspired great love affairs and daring thefts these famous diamonds seem to have a life of their own here are their stories you the fascination with diamonds spans the globe from South Africa's mines to the sewing rooms of London diamonds are their life great Beethoven symphonies even better they go on forever the classic the word diamond comes from the Greek además indestructible older than the dinosaurs and harder than any material on earth diamonds are prized for their toughness their ability to withstand intense heat and the mysterious light they emit it sparkles it fires the imagination it reflects the lights and people say you see your soul in it consider the case of the notorious hope one of the largest blue diamonds in the world while most diamonds are white nature occasionally produces them in a rainbow of colors their deep hue making them rare and coveted since its discovery in the 1600s the Hope has crossed oceans and continents been stolen and recovered but that's not what made this 46 carat gemstone so famous the hope is remarkable darlin there is Sir to be accursed it certainly has brought a lot of bad luck a curse as I like the curse of the mummy you know if you if you believe in them they may happen or circumstance around him will permit you personally I don't believe in curses but the legacy of bad luck surrounding the stone is hard to ignore in 1921 it inspired the serial film the Hope Diamond mystery the first episode shows the dastardly deed that supposedly set the curse in motion a thief steals the diamond from a Hindu statue unleashing the wrath of the gods maybe that's how it all started maybe not but this extraordinary diamond has more than earned its ill-fated reputation during the 17th century diamond merchant jean-baptiste tavern a acquired the hope in India and brought it to France at some stage he come across a hoop I presented to lure the 40 during the 14th had 70 jobs and his tunics I think he would have sucked like a lead balloon probably if he put in the scene while King Louie didn't drown he did eventually contract gangrene and suffered a long and painful death Marie Antoinette and Louis the sixteenth inherited the beautiful blue diamond next but didn't have much time to enjoy it they both lost their heads of the guillotine during the French Revolution I think that's one of the tragic fates where one could meet whether the diamond was the cause of it I'll leave it to the imagination in 1792 the diamond was stolen from France it resurfaced 20 years later in London where a wealthy banker bought it and gave it his name some historians even say precisely in 1830 Henry Hope came into possession of this particular diamond and I think that name stuck to the Steinman not even diamonds can buy love and sadly Hope died a lonely bachelor the killer diamond eventually found its way around the neck of his great niece who often wore the hope on stage despite the charm perhaps because of it her career and love life ended in shambles the hopes next view owners fared no better the diamond left a trail of misfortune in its wake before it cast its dark cloud over American shores Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean was offered the hope by the jeweler Cartier in 1911 some say Cartier actually invented the legend of the curse to entice the daredevil aristocrat to buy it whatever the story's origins it worked but just be on the safe side mrs. McLean had her new bauble blessed by a priest she was a little bit of an eccentric lady she entertained lavishly in America and she used to take the Hope Diamond off her necklace and her parties would throw it up in the air and her dog would retrieve them which is so quite well but the party didn't last forever the son of the wealthy heiress was killed in an automobile accident her husband was committed to a mental hospital and her daughter died from an overdose of sleeping pills she had a lot of personal tragedies although she didn't describe them to the hope she said the hope was lucky for her shortly thing to say a few of these tragedies after mrs. McLean died of pneumonia at the age of 60 our estate decided to sell the ill-fated diamond but who would dare risk the curse a New York jeweler with an eye for fabulous gemstones and a flair for public relations rose to the hopes challenge of the 300 most famous diamonds in the world Harry Winston had already bought and sold 60 his name was famous but because of the treasures he handled his insurers never allowed his face to be photographed ronald winston like his father before him must also protect his identity I remember hearing on the radio that he bought the Hope Diamond some other jewels a million dollar search of course his little boy was a number beyond the dreams of avarice the fabulous collection of the late Evalyn Walsh McLean including the famous Hope Diamond and Harry Winston's purchase of the Hope in 1949 only served to cement his reputation as the King of Diamonds and then in 1958 Winston decided to give the hope to the American people permanently he chose an unusual method of delivery one with a touch of winston drama are the fabulous blue white of diamond did some he'd never do today email that he sent it by ordinary posts to the Smithsonian from his office what tales they tell of the hope a history of 300 years of murder death bad luck a curse on whoever owned it says the legend its first owner assassinate not everyone was thrilled with a gift but today it remains in a bulletproof case at the Smithsonian as far as we know none of the tourists have been visited by the curse there have always been mysterious powers attributed to diamonds over the centuries people have believed that diamonds could ward off devils calm the mentally ill and provide the wearer with extra strength on the battlefield and in the bedroom it was in the 15th century that the diamond came to symbolize the power of love the Emperor Maximilian of Austria married the Princess Mary of Burgundy and gave her a diamond engagement ring and the diamond is served as a symbol of weddings for all those centuries if only they could ensure everlasting love that certainly was the hope of Count Grigory Orlov who bought this magnificent stone for his secret lover Catherine the great ruler of the Russian Empire displayed at the Kremlin in Moscow the 190 carat Olaf is set in the Royal scepter it remains the centerpiece of the Russian crown jewels the count helped plan the coup that placed Catherine on the Russian throne in 1762 but the Empress was a restless soul with a roaming eye when she turned her powerful gaze towards other men all off devised a plan to win her back olaf apparently had bought the town in order to ingratiate himself with cats and agreed he'd fallen out of her favor so i suppose not to put too fine a construction he wished it back based on her favor on into her bedroom Orlov obtained the diamond legally from a merchant in amsterdam but it had a past shrouded in mystery a deserter from the French Foreign Legion first spied the sparkler in an Indian temple the Olof diamond it's supposed to have adorned a Buddha as the third eye and story goes that there is a French gentleman very unscrupulous gentleman gained access to the Buddha and eventually stole it and made off with it it is indeed a gift fit for a queen and Catherine the Great was dazzled by the diamond Catherine took the stone and thanked him but still dropped him so eventually he wound up going insane and a poor man in insane asylum so it's a moral there somewhere along the line luckily the diamond survived even the Russian Revolution and Lenin in Moscow and it's still there in the scepter today but men continued to put their faith in the power of the diamond no modern personality is more identified with diamonds than Elizabeth Taylor Taylor and husband number five and six Richard Burton played out their larger-than-life passion in public and on the silver screen celebrating makeups and breakups with lavish gifts of diamonds the bigger the better this diamond which came to be known as the Taylor Burton became a world famous symbol of their stormy relationship when it came up for auction in 1969 Burton set out to win the treasure for his ladylove kochak I think with a successful bidder was a Richard Burton with the runner-up and the story I heard was it Richard Burton was in a well-known public house between London and oxen and there was simply a pay phone there and he was putting in money and he was speaking either to his agent who also would get that time and get it from County I wanted for Liz more money crashing good I do you hear me I want that our paying us in for more crash on the local sort of looking round what's he up to Burton ultimately succeeded in getting the diamond what does sixty nine point four carats really mean I mean you want to see what it can't be dismissed as an idle bauble and Liz loved showing it all this monster it still belongs to me no she leaves me I keep the diamonds oh joy but the love story was not to last they were divorced and married and divorced again by 1976 by the way Liz kept the diamond and sold it for a whopping three million dollars it was last spotted in Saudi Arabia diamonds like the Taylor Burton don't turn up every day the miracle of their violent birth may be the best adventure story of them all volcanoes don't just spew out smoke in molten lava they also act as elevators for the world's hardest substance diamonds diamonds grow hundreds of miles down deep within the earth they are created when carbon is placed on the crushing pressure and exposed to white-hot temperatures after baking for hundreds of millions of years a violent volcanic eruption can blast the crystals to the Earth's surface in just a few hours speed is of the essence if the journey up takes too long the carbon converts to graphite which goes inside pencils instead of forming diamonds which may cap an emperors the world's first diamond mine was supposedly discovered by Alexander the Great in India which was known as the initial cradle of the diamond industry India up till the early 18th century was the diamond capital of most of the time ins were in fact found in place called Golconda that was the only source of timing for the world one of the most extraordinary diamonds to come from the mines of India was known as the Kohinoor or mountain of light this stone travelled a circuitous route from the hands of a madman to the head of a beloved queen first noted in India in 1304 the Kohinoor belonged to generations of Mughal Emperor's who treasured it for centuries before it was plundered by a ruthless persian conqueror the Persian tyrant named nadir Shah invaded India in 1739 and he of course had known that the mogul Emperor of Delhi possessed this famous diamond and he contrived somehow to get that diamond another shock was able to secure this information from the harem of the defeated mogul Emperor that the rankest Emperor had the coin no diamond in the fours of his turban once he learned the Diamonds hiding-place the Conqueror invoked an ancient custom another Shah said that in view of our friendship let us exchanged happens for the wretched chap could hardly refuse the defeated Emperor did not show any sign of nervousness or anger or anything so that neither shop immediately withdrew to his own private space and unfolded the turban and when he looked up and said go in or mountain of life but the dazzling light show of the Kohinoor did not bring the SHA good fortune he was assassinated a few years later fulfilling a prophecy associated with the stone it was known as the mystic diamond because it said whoever owned the stone ruled the world and it is also said that it was unlucky for a man to wear it but looking for a lady because most of the men who held the stone had a tragic ending to their life the stone remained in perpetual motion throughout the 18th century passing hand to hand by conquest and misadventure until the Punjab a northern territory of present-day India was conquered and the British took control the last Punjab ruler Ranjit Singh had the misfortune that the English walked in and took his country away from him and he lost not only his throne but he lost also the most famous diamond in the world at the same time as the British expanded their empire in India they claimed the : or for the Queen in 18-49 Victoria the most powerful woman in the world at that time would go on to rule England for 64 years when she opened the 1851 exposition at the Crystal Palace her new diamond was prominently displayed but Victorian society was in a word unimpressed as the Indians worship wait worn symmetry and brilliance Queen Victoria authorized its reshaping and it's hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with a 109 carat diamond that resulted taking heed of superstition surrounding the stone no British king or Prince has ever worn the diamond in 1994 the coronor and the other crown jewels were moved into the jewel house within the grounds of the Tower of London but milling the crown jewel curator at the time warned potential thieves not to bother well as you can see by the construction of just this one particular case heavy brass stone thick bomb-proof bulletproof glass and then again covered by all the latest electronic and closed-circuit televisions so I don't think that anybody's going to make with much success today security for the collection appears formidable but for hundreds of years protection consisted of one man who earned tips after hours by offering private viewings of the crown jewels in 1671 Colonel Thomas blood and Irishmen disguised as a member of the clergy toured the collection with Talbot Edwards the official keeper of the English crown jewels noticing the almost complete lack of security blood began plotting a daring heist so they got very friendly and very pally and in due course they came to visit and he brought some friends along which you'd asked if the keeper would allow him to come and see the jewels and show them to his friends and during that visit he then clubbed keeper Edwards on the head poor old Tolbert woke up eventually and shouted trees and trees in the crown is stolen keeper Edwards son who was a young Army officer came back from leave and literally in the nick of time discovered them running out with pieces of the crown jewels as they dropped one and he they were arrested today it takes more than a clever disguise and a cunning rogue to make off with the world's most famous diamonds in the 1.2 billion dollar Millennium Dome Londyn no expense has been spared to guard one of the world's newest and most dazzling diamonds the Millennium Star protected by high-strength glass cameras and sound receivers that monitor if anyone's attempting to smash the glass this diamond is secure and considering it's worth it better be there are only about a hundred or so diamonds in the world that are in excess of 100 carats as being one of them each one of them is so individual and so so very different and in that case there is stream leave rare in the Millennium Dome Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth anxiously awaited the unveiling of the Millennium start 10 minutes before the start of the 21st century following all the heels of the first royal visitors crowds had gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of an Earthbound star it certainly looks brighter than the brightest star that you can see in the sky absolutely white as as white convicted and it's cuts so fantastically this such fire and sparkle looks to me like a star it was very easy today we named it about three minutes the beerus millenium star is just a perfect classic beautiful miracle diamonds don't come out of the ground sparkling like the millennium star it takes a true artist to polish mother nature's perfect design one cut can release the fire and the ice diamonds are famous for or turn a priceless gem into a pile of dust at the William Goldberg diamond corporation in New York City experts are engaged in the age-old craft of lapidary or diamond cutting handed down from father to son they must decide how to carve around the flaws in the rough diamond and extract the polished stone the rough dictates many things to you you may look for an emerald cut but there may be hidden imperfection which will say uh-uh you want a normal couple I'm going to be a pear-shaped whether it ends up as a marquise cut or an oval shape with nothing in nature harder it takes a diamond to cut a diamond it is this painstaking process of rubbing facets or faces into rough diamonds that transforms ordinary looking stones into sparkling objects of desire when you stop cutting it you discover that the light has a journey inside this diamond it's very amazing that this time it is transparent translucent light streams through it but remains captive inside it and when you cover it with facets it starts jumping from one facet to another inside the diamond so I was I would say that the Goldbergs travelled to the De Beers sorting house in London ten times a year to collect rough diamonds to be cut into gemstones we prefer to get these beautiful clean crystals where you can make too out of them because the yield is much better as this is God's working diamonds to its ultimate this was probably for hundreds of million years was washed anew in the water and in a mountain on the mountain and it reached this point where it's so clear and crystal whereas most probably this is comparable let's say to a fetus that's five months old I want an analogy but it's true after the Goldbergs make their selection it's make it or break it time for the lapidaries diamond cutting requires a steady hand and nerves of steel you see you can't cut the diamond and say oh I made a mistake I'm going to take the same diamond that cut it again it's finished you destroyed it talk about pressure there's never been a cutting drama quite the equal of the cleaver and the Cullinan it all began in Transvaal South Africa in 1905 when a brilliantly shiny shard caught the eye of my manager of Fred wells he used his penknife to pry the colossal stone out of the wall and brought it to the head office it was even said by one of the surveyors who looked at it that it was a piece of crystal and threw it out of the window said it was no good at all said it well not being quite sure about that then recovered it I mean it was about suicide my my fist there's been no other dam comparable I was caught something like the eighth wonder of the world diamonds are usually measured in carats a carat is about 1/5 of a gram or the size of a small pea this massive stone all 3106 carats of it was bigger than a baseball the Cullinan weighed in at 1 and 1/3 pounds 3 times larger than any known diamond the government of South Africa thought it would make a splendid birthday present for King Edward the seventh of Britain surely he wouldn't have another one of these the dilemma how to get the hot rock safely to Buckingham Palace after much debate Scotland Yard simply put it in an ordinary box wrapped it in brown paper and sent the unmarked package via regular mail they foiled potential thieves by sending a decoy on a ship by November of 1907 the Cullinan had arrived safely in London delivered by an unsuspecting postal worker but the drama was just beginning someone would have to cut the Cullinan to bring out the fire inside the ice but no cutter wanted the destruction of this wonder on his head the delegate task fell to the venerable firm of Asher's of Antwerp it was given to a man called Joseph Asha and apparently he studied the diamond for some three months or more to find out which way the crystalline planes of the diamond wind and then he actually attempted to cleave it which was of course an enormous amount of pressure on one man and it is said that when he struck the first blow and the thing fell perfectly in half that he actually fainted from the pressure of it woke up saw that it was intact and hadn't shattered like a car windscreen fainted again but he didn't destroyed the stone the country he achieved a work of art at the Beauty beauty's because he cut many stones ugly the Covenant yielded nine large in 96 smaller diamonds of the nine the two largest were the 550 carat great star of Africa and the 317 carat lesser star of Africa both huge diamonds continued to catch the eye of crowds who view the British crown jewels at their home in the Tower of London exceptionally large diamonds are not the exclusive domain of royalty one American who always reveled in this high-stakes game of buying and cutting large stones was the King of Diamonds himself Harry Winston one of Winston's all-time favorite diamonds was the Jonker found in south africa in 1934 the largest diamond to come to light since the Cullinan it weighed 726 carats about the size of a plum Winston paid a fortune for the Jonker despite warnings that the rough stone was shaped in such a way that made cutting it a 50/50 gamble at best knowing that a mere slip of the wrist would leave him with a pile of shattered glass Lloyds of London Winston's insurance company refused to cover the loss if the diamond was destroyed during the cutting process so Winston held his breath and upped the ante he decided to cut the diamond in front of a national audience big thick now bother found on a South African farm too large for anybody to buy it I think he always had a great flair for public relations publicity he knew how to create a story for the public and people were you know interested in something that was so small and concentrated and so very valuable it needed to be exactly according to the grade otherwise is so much chatter of the pieces diamond cutter overseas and he's never safe until the last facet is finish ah a perfect cut right along the plane of cleavage the Jonker was reborn as 13 glittering trinkets Winston kept the largest one himself and set it in a magnificent platinum necklace in 1951 he will luck Tinley let it go to King Farouk of Egypt in 1986 there was yet another diamond-cutting cliffhanger the same mind that produced the Cullinan 80 years before unearthed this 599 carrot Beauty diamond cutter Gavi Tolkowsky was one of the few invited to inspected and effectively when I've seen it for the first time I didn't they attach it because was so fabulous that I hesitated them in color was what we were without talking about ice no color it was like you know what the dream you have to go into the Andes in South America up there in the mountains and find a lake where the water is so clear that you can see the bottom without even thinking about it and that was the color of this time water you could see through it some at the world-famous De Beers diamond consortium wanted to leave it in a state of natural splendor others voted for polishing to enhance its beauty the beauty camp won and Gaby Tolkowsky was brought in from Antwerp to cut the diamond one of the directors came at lunchtime and knocked on my shoulders said you know by the way you're going to cut it and I didn't know what it was talking about and then he said well you know the 599 character I couldn't believe it I said oh my god what is going to happen to me for months Gavi and a team of experts studied the diamond from every angle testing mathematically calculated cuts on models finally the moment of truth arrived I didn't need lasers no computers I was using on with histone two factors the oldest of all methods that could exist in the history of diamond which was removing part of this diamond by hand 454 days I was myself doing it the two-week hands of the men scratching day after day slots into the diamond and then removing the pieces by hands without knocking even once after three years of tremendous team effort and the blending of technologies both old and new the diamond was reduced from 599 to 274 flawless carats because of his brilliant work at De Beers today gaby Tolkowsky is at the cutting edge when it comes to making buried treasure shine its brightest it is simply a fabulous wonderful table probably the finest modern cutter DeBeers unveiled the diamond at its 100th anniversary ceremony in 1988 fittingly dubbed the centenary it continues its mesmerizing light show shimmering at its home in South Africa day after day lapidaries around the world sit-up the wheel and transform diamonds in the rough into the stuff that dreams are made of ever wonder what happens to the carrots they whittle away while creating a masterpiece like the centenary some stones which this one the other side will lose almost 65% most of this dust which goes into my lungs at least I have an expensive longer a lot of diamond dust diamonds are one of the world's most portable currencies a fortune can be easily hidden in the palm of a hand or even under a fingernail here in the de Vere's London diamond sorting houses millions of dollars and stones are graded every day to save security is tight would be an understatement Robin Walker has been working around diamonds for 40 years from diamond prospecting on the South African plains to his current position as De Beers marketing liaison with two-thirds of the world's diamonds passing through London you can imagine it's a fair amount of money we obviously take the greatest precautions possible that we can but when you ask about our security here this is one area where I'm going to really close up like a clam like magicians guarding their secrets security officials responsible for protecting the world's most priceless gems prefer not to share the tricks of their trade at the diffuse mines in South Africa workers are closely watched to ensure they don't add a diamond to their lunch the compound with one stuck to the sole of their shoe but where there's a will there's a way and swallowing diamonds will never go out of style they've also tried shooting them over the fence with a bow and arrow and flying them out on homing pigeons we have to use every possible conceivable method of security alert x-rays of those cameras you are constantly having to be on your left and you're constantly having to improve your security today's high-tech monitoring devices are the culmination of centuries of trial and error things were more basic in the old days when security consisted of little more than guards with a good eye and a quick Club the tale of the Regent diamond began when one worker was a little quicker and more cunning than his guards the Golf ball-sized Regent was discovered by a slave working the mines of India in the early 1700s envisioning a life of riches the desperate man cut a wound in his leg and hid the 3-ounce gem under the bandages the slave made it to the port in Madras and promised an enterprising English sea captain half the profits from the sale of the gem if he smuggled him to freedom but once out at sea the captain got other ideas it was sold to a British sea captain who allowed the slave on board the captain decided to take complete possession of the time and then flung the poor slave into a high seas the captain returned to the Indian port and sold a stone to an unscrupulous diamond merchant who didn't care how much blood had been spilled to obtain the stone the story goes that the captain squandered the money on wine women and song finally broke and supposedly haunted by the ghost of the slave he killed he saw only one way out the British sea captain felt quite remorseful he ended up dying in alcoholic and I think he had a number of misfortunes that visited his family and as a result of the fact that he was hounded by his debtors he committed suicide by hanging himself but one man's bad luck is another's fortune the diamond merchants soon found a buyer for the stolen gem the British governor of the Indian port city of Madras Thomas Pitts Pitts eventually left his post in India and traveled home to London however word of his purchase had spread and earned him a new nickname diamond pit Tom Pitt was very nervous and he always went armed because he had a morbid sense of death visiting him even when recognized he would not divulge the information that he carried this famous diamond and that he changed his sleeping quarters every night set a different house affair that the Stallman verb someone would grab it sleep-deprived and paranoid Pitt couldn't take the constant stress of diamond ownership anymore he tried to sell it but there were no takers at his price eventually he got lucky a financially secure seven-year old king Louis the 15th of France bought the diamond Louise Regent or advisor at the Duke of Olay all brokered the deal for the young sovereign and in reward the diamond was named the Regent and has become the crown jewel I think of France Confederated I think for the French and I agree with superb lovely down the 141 carat beauty of the region shines on at the Louvre Museum where it is especially cherished not only for its beauty and its somewhat shady past but because it was almost lost forever during the dark days of the French Revolution by 1792 the revolution was well underway the oppressed were turning the tables on their oppressors the French royalty that September the crown jewels of France disappeared from their home of the guard who lay in Paris peasants roamed the halls where Kings had recently walked the robbery took on the air of a party as each night more thieves arrived bringing bottles of wine with them the Treasury in France had a major security leak they stole off the Treasury key and amongst them was of course the Regent diamond and many other pieces which vanished for many many years and then resurfaced the Regent add up in an attic I think a few days later but not all diamond heists are resolved with such good results in 1964 a notorious theft worthy of a Mission Impossible episode was perpetrated on the Natural History Museum in New York City the ringleader Jack Murphy nicknamed Murph the surf for his championship surfing days in California was reportedly inspired by the jewel heist film topkapi which had just opened in the film a band of sophisticated thieves targets the Topkapi Palace Museum in Turkey yes yes Kai the real-life robbers wouldn't have to be nearly as acrobatic Murphy and his two accomplices set their sights on the American Museum of Natural History's Gem and Mineral Department their goal the Star of India one of the world's largest sapphires and the eagle the largest diamond ever found in the United States up until that time as in the movie the thieves located in open window and lower themselves 20 feet to the floor it couldn't have been easier the alarm system for the gems have been disconnected months earlier because the electric bills were too high cutting through the glass cases Murph and his cronies got what they came for and made a clean getaway the family a program professional run unprofessional that whims with foreign after finally print panel Jack Murphy got the jewels but in the end the long arm of the law caught up with him only two days after the robbery an informant put the finger on the trio Murph was arrested in Miami brought back to New York and found guilty for the robbery of more than four hundred ten thousand dollars in diamonds and gems as for the jewels the Sapphire was recovered but sadly none of the diamonds including the Eagle ever made it back to the Museum of Natural History as long as new diamonds are uncovered theft will always be part of the equation but finding diamonds can be an even trickier business than stealing them nothing catches our eye quite like the sparkle of diamonds diamonds are a girl's best friend but even in an age of plenty beautiful stones like these don't turn up every day finally a diamond is extremely difficult I'm on the very few people working for De Beers in London that's ever actually physically dug diamonds themselves I used to be a a diamond prospector and I know it is very hard to actually find even one one diamond and the thrill of finding a diamond even a small one is really is really something fantastic it it really it really gets you perhaps the only thing more fantastic is finding a great big diamond a 15 year old South African boy out for a stroll spied this curious stone and it wasn't until 1866 that the very first diamond was found in Africa a shepherd boy found a diamond on the banks of river 21 cats in the rough and the diamond surprise surprise was called the Eureka diamond many suspected land speculators of planting the precious stone and wrote the discovery off as a fluke but three years later when an even larger diamond was found in the same region the race was on the one that set the hills see the life is discovery of the 83 karat stars that have within three years of the discoveries thousands of fortune seekers had made the sweltering forty day trek from Cape Town on the coast of South Africa to the small town of Kimberley near where the Eureka and star of South Africa had been found this is what they came all the way for online known simply as big hole many did indeed make a fortune here but the reward hinged on perilous risk can you imagine the scene whereby you're looking into the start of a huge crater you're looking in there and right below you is like thousands of ants scrambling away the walls are there's a wall here as a wall there the walls are cracking the walls of breaking those ropeways everywhere it's a scene of chaos a scene of shambles when they got to the big hole yes it was chaos of life my MA she knew falling into the pit is pretty chaotic but full of atmosphere oh I had Ivan I would a will again charts my arm left man you're investing or that one Oxford educated English man who found himself in the right place at the right time with the right vision for the future was Cecil Rhodes the man who was to launch the modern diamond industry began buying up individual mining claims and consolidating them into one company Safa red was the great genius behind he saw the all this chaos he brought order to chaos as Tamra set up the De Beers country roads named the firm after the De Beers brothers to farmers who leased land to the diamond prospect and the two brothers thought any minute you'd strike bedrock and the boom was over and the two brothers thought hey let's be smart let's get out while the goings good we made our money we're laughing and you know things are great let's get out so they sold for a very substantial sum of money timing is everything just a year later a major strike on the farm would forever linked the name De Beers with diamonds and leave the De Beers brothers far behind a footnote to history over the years this fertile ground has produced some of the world's most famous diamonds one of the most extraordinary finds was a golden stone that has resided in New York City for the past century the Tiffany diamond it was found in in the Kimberley mines in 1877 there never been such a large canary diamond found before was enormous it weighed 287 carats Charles Tiffany purchased the stone in Paris for the equivalent of four hundred ten thousand dollars in today's currency he brought the trophy home to New York City where it became the symbol for its flagship store Audrey Hepburn is one of the lucky few who have actually worn the gem she modelled it to publicize the film Breakfast at Tiffany's but did not actually wear it in the movie in 1972 there was a public outcry when Tiffany's offered the diamond for sale fortunately no one appeared with the five million dollars in cash since then the stone has been declared untouchable it remains on display for all window shoppers and dreamers to enjoy discovering a large diamond like the Tiffany is a once-in-a-lifetime event in fact despite all the advances in technology and scientific knowledge finding diamonds of any size remains a longshot akin to finding a needle in a haystack it could take several hundred tons to be crushed and processed only to end up with a one carat polished diamond now that it that is pretty amazing the biggest question facing the diamond prospector of the 21st century is where will the next famous diamonds come from in many places around the world diamond respecting is taking place as we speak there's a man or woman out there who may suddenly find the great bingo the great one in millions we just don't know one thing is certain diamonds will continue to cast their spell these famous jewels have had a remarkable journey through the ages plucked from the earth treasured plundered given in love and taken in greed for centuries they have beguiled us and for centuries more their beauty and mystery will burn brightly diamonds are forever but now our story is at an end you

Channel: ringgrip

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Length: 49min 12sec (2952 seconds)

Published: Mon May 21 2012