• mineralogist George Switzer persuaded Harry Winston to donate the Hope Diamond (pictured) to the Smithsonian Institution, establishing the National Museum of Natural History's gem and mineral collection?

Facts on topics related to Hope Diamond

Koh-i-Noor

• James Tennant took over from Sarah Mawe as "Mineralogist to Her Majesty" and he supervised the recutting of the Koh-i-Noor diamond?

Diamond

• fashion designer Maria Grachvogel created a dress adorned with 2,000 diamonds worth £250,000 for her London Fashion Week show?
• Debswana, a joint venture between De Beers and the government of Botswana, is the largest producer of diamonds by value in the world?
• Deepdene is believed to be the world's largest irradiated diamond?
• Jules Porgès was a financier central to the rise of the Randlords who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries in South Africa from the 1870s?
• after adding thallium formate and thallium malonate to water, diamonds can float in it?
• the spintronic manipulation of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond crystals may facilitate the creation and functioning of quantum computers?
• the Eureka Diamond, the first diamond discovered in South Africa, was used as a toy by the boy who discovered it, given away for free by his mother, and sent by mail to a mineralogist in an ordinary paper envelope?
• the Moon of Baroda, a 24.04-carat diamond, was worn by actress Marilyn Monroe and Empress Marie Therese of Austria?
• the Uncle Sam diamond, the largest diamond ever discovered in the United States, bears the nickname of the man who found it?
• the first diamonds in Namibia were found near the village of Berseba in 1898?

Jewellery

• Billfrith, the Northumbrian saint whose name appears in the Durham Liber Vitae, is credited with providing the original gold, silver and jewel ornamentation for the Lindisfarne Gospels?
• specimens of the tiger cowry have been found at Pompeii, where they were most likely used as ornaments?
• upon its discovery, the Newark Torc was called "probably the most significant find of Iron Age Celtic gold jewellery made in the last 50 years"?