The Hope Diamond
- History Fix Podcast
- 17 hours ago
- 21 min read
Episode 138: How the Dark History of the Most Famous Diamond in the World Led to Legends of a Curse
Listen:
Watch:
Transcript:
Last week I came to you with the story of the French crown jewels recently stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris. All 8 pieces included diamonds, most of which probably came from India, and many of which were once part of the jewel collection of France’s King Louis the fourteenth. Diving into the world of Louis the fourteenth’s Indian diamond collection, however, led me directly to a stone that I failed to mention last week, a stone that is, quite possibly, the most famous diamond in the world: the Hope Diamond. The story of the Hope Diamond is convoluted. It changed hands many times, stolen on several occasions and was gradually cut down from 112 carats to just 45 and a half today. Known for its rich blue color and red phosphorescence, the Hope Diamond is extremely rare and highly coveted. But, a big part of the reason the Hope Diamond is so well known is not because it’s pretty and sparkly. It’s because it has a rather dark past. In fact, when you follow the story of the Hope Diamond back through its many owners, you may begin to notice a trail of destruction and tragedy left in its wake. For many, the tragic demise of many of the diamond’s former owners is even proof of a curse. This infamy is a big part of what makes the Hope Diamond the most famous diamond in the world with an estimated value of between 200 and 350 million dollars. But, is any of it true? Or is it all a publicity stunt? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I discuss surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Two weeks ago I came to you with the story of a cursed ship, the Mary Celeste, and last week we talked about stolen French jewels. So, it only made sense that we should follow up with the story of a potentially cursed stolen French jewel. Right? The Hope Diamond currently lives at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. I saw it there myself some years ago. That’s all I really remember from that trip to the museum, the Hope Diamond and the Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz which are at the American History museum there. I was like 13, that's all I cared about. The American History museum also has Mr. Roger’s sweater. I was into that too. Anyway, way off topic. That’s where the Hope Diamond is now, in Washington DC. But the story of how it got there is quite an epic tale dotted, in fact, with so much tragedy, that it has led to legends about a curse. Here’s the thing though, when I dig into the history of the diamond, it becomes immediately apparent that a lot of the tales of misfortune told about it aren’t actually true. Or, they might be true, but there’s nothing at all really to back it up, just something someone said one time. But why would they say it if it wasn’t true? Why would anyone want to fabricate a cursed diamond? Welp, notoriety, infamy, intrigue, do a whole lot for the monetary value of something like a diamond. Humans are weird. Give something a juicy back story and you can charge twice as much for it. So today I want to find out, how true is the legend of the cursed Hope Diamond? Let’s try to find the truth in it.
The diamond’s first official owner was France’s King Louis the fourteenth. Louis was an exceedingly lavish guy, we’ll put it that way. He was also known as Louis the Great and Louis the Sun King. He chose the sun as the symbol of his reign because he believed in the absolute power of the monarchy and that he had a divine right to rule. So the ego is strong with this one. Louis is perhaps best known for building the Palace of Versaille which is this over the top, gilded, palatial estate. He was also known to have a pretty solid jewel collection. Louis was into anything that showed off his grandeur, his opulence, and extreme wealth and superiority as the all mighty Sun King. This was, okay so Louis ruled from 1643 until 1715. This was a time when it was still socially acceptable to use tax money that was supposed to go to feeding poor people and use it to cover yourself in precious gems inside your gilded palace. So, that was Louis the fourteenth.
He loved gems so much that he had his own guy whose job it was to go find him the most beautiful gems in the world. This guy’s name was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. He was a French gem merchant who made 5 trips to India we know between 1640 and 1667. India was the hot spot for diamonds. This is where all the European royal families went to get their diamonds that were incorporated into their crown jewels. For example, the koh-i-noor diamond which adorns the Queen Mother’s crown as part of the British crown jewels and is the most valuable diamond in the world, that came from India. Actually India wants that back too, that’s pretty controversh. Anyway, these diamonds were coming from diamond mines in India and that is where Tavernier got what will become the Hope Diamond. Now, there are all kinds of legends about how he actually acquired it. He most likely purchased it from these Indian diamond mines. But, according to the legends, he stole it. The legend goes that Tavernier stole the diamond off of a Hindu statue of the goddess Sita. It was one of the eyes on the statue. Now, this legend doesn’t arise until something like 300 years later in an 1888 newspaper article from New Zealand so that’s never a good sign when you’re seeking the truth. Also, the other eye of the statue, which would be a similarly rare and gigantic blue diamond I assume, has never surfaced. There is no other diamond like this that we know of. There are also legends that, at some point after acquiring the diamond, Tavernier was attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs. But, as we know that he actually lived to the ripe old age of 84, this is almost certainly not true.
But, we do know that Tavernier got the diamond in India sometime in the mid 1600s and presented it to King Louis the fourteenth along with some other diamonds as well. The original diamond was around 112 carats which is ginormous, and it was uncut, it was in its raw form. People in India were more into the size of the diamond. They just wanted it as big as possible. In France, they were more into the cut and the luster. They wanted it shapely and sparkly. So Louis gets the diamond from Tavernier and he has it cut and shaped, a process that took 2 years, and brought the diamond down from 112 carats to just 69 carats. Because of its blue color, it was called the Blue Diamond of the Crown of France, according to contemporary inventories that list it. Colloquially it was called the French Blue. So well before it was the Hope Diamond, it was the French Blue. Louis had it set in gold and it hung on a ribbon around his neck during ceremonies. He’s not like wearing it daily. It’s super special.
So, what became of Louis the fourteenth, original owner of the diamond? Did the curse claim its first victim? Some say so. He eventually died of gangrene in his leg, probably caused by diabetes. Gangrene happens when tissue dies and rots essentially while still on your body. This can happen due to infection or because of a lack of blood supply. In Louis’ case, if it was diabetes related, the gangrene would have been caused by poor circulation, a lack of blood. Nowadays he’d have the leg amputated. But back then, in the 1600s, a leg amputation wasn’t life saving. It was just as much a death sentence as the gangrene itself. And so Louis died a somewhat slow and painful death as his flesh rotted away and spread infection to the rest of his body eventually resulting in organ failure. Not pretty. But, is it a curse? Well, we have to also consider that Louis had a long and very prosperous reign and that he lived to the age of 76 which was quite old for 1715 when he died. Y’all, the life expectancy in France in the early 1700s was like 25 years old. Isn’t that wild? So 76? He tripled that. Not a great way to go but like, did pretty awesome otherwise as far as lives go.
The crown goes next to Louis’ 5 year old great grandson who becomes Louis the fifteenth. Louis the fourteenth had outlived both his son and grandson which meant he left the crown to his great grandson upon his death. Not sounding very cursed to me. Louis the fifteenth had the French Blue diamond reset into a more elaborate piece. Remember, Louis the fourteenth just like wore it on a ribbon around his neck sometimes. Louis the fifteenth turns it into this pendant thing called the Order of the Golden Fleece. It has this red stone shaped like a dragon breathing flames on the diamond and it has like other diamonds around it too. It’s kind of nuts. You’re seeing it right now if you’re watching the video version of this. After this alteration to the diamond, bad things start to happen. And people attribute this to the curse. Soon after, the Seven Years War between France and Great Britain broke out. Louis was also attacked and stabbed by a would be assassin but survived in 1757. He eventually died of smallpox in 1774 at the age of 64. So people go “hmm. He had the diamond reset into this Order of the Fleece thing and then there was a war, someone stabbed him, and then like 20 more years of successfully being king later he died of a terrible but incredibly common illness at an age that more than doubled the then life expectancy. It must have been the curse.” But do you see how the context matters for all of that? War, assassination attempt, smallpox. Terrible. Cursed for sure. But then again like, survived the war, survived the assassination attempt, lived to a ripe old age and died of a predictable cause in his lavish kingly bedroom. Eh, maybe not as cursed after all.
The French Blue diamond still set in the Order of the Golden Fleece pendant passed to Louis the fifteenth’s grandson who inherited the throne next. You know this guy, our old buddy Louis the sixteenth of French Revolution guillotine fame. Louis the sixteenth ruled France from 1774 until 1792 when they officially kicked him off the throne. He was executed in 1793 followed soon after by his wife, equally as famous Marie Antoinette. Check out episodes 90 and 91 about the French Revolution for more on all that. Now, they obviously met a terrible fate, right kicked off the throne, heads chopped off. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Cursed? Maybe. People also look at the fate of one of Marie Antoinette’s best friends Marie-Louise Princess of Lamballe who was brutally killed during the revolution and basically ripped to shreds and paraded through the streets outside Marie Antoinette’s window. Horrifying story. And people say, “Oh, well you know Marie Antoinette let this woman, her friend, wear the French blue diamond, the Order of the Golden Fleece pendant. She wore it all the time. The curse got her too.” I saw that multiple times while researching this. But, um, no. I don’t think she did. Marie Antoinette never even wore the Order of the Golden Fleece pendant that we know of. Marie Antoinette was known for repurposing old crown jewels into new pieces for personal adornment. She had an extensive jewelry collection. But she never touched the Order of the Golden Fleece. It remained intact and was not reset or repurposed. Plus historical records indicate that it was reserved exclusively for the king which means that neither Marie would have worn it.
During the revolution, the palaces were raided and looted and at some point the Order of the Golden Fleece pendant containing the French Blue diamond was stolen by someone. Many of the other stones in the pendant were recovered, but not the French Blue. It disappeared entirely for a couple decades. The diamond eventually resurfaced in London in 1812 but it was almost unrecognizable. It had been cut into a much smaller stone. The piece in London, in the collection of diamond merchant Daniel Eliason, was only 45 carats instead of 69. It had been badly cut, jewelers say whoever cut it butchered the job because they made it way smaller first of all but also the way they cut it reduced its luster. But, you know, this thing was stolen, they had to cut it, they had to disguise it so France didn’t just immediately reclaim it. And we weren’t really even sure if this stone in London was the same stone as the French Blue until recently actually. According to Wikipedia quote “It was long believed that the Hope Diamond was cut from the French Blue, but confirmation came when a three-dimensional leaden model of the latter was rediscovered in the archives of the Paris National Museum of Natural History in 2005. Previously, the dimensions of the French Blue had been known only from two drawings made in 1749 and 1789; although the model differs slightly from the drawings in some details, these details are identical to features of the Hope Diamond, allowing CAD technology to digitally reconstruct the French Blue around the recut stone,” end quote.
So the stone turns back up in the collection of this diamond merchant Daniel Eliason around 20 years later, which also just so happens to be when the statute of limitations ran out. So, France can’t even do anything about it now. So what happened to it next? We think it may have been owned by Great Britain's King George IV for a minute. There aren’t great records to back that up but according to the Smithsonian there are quote "several references” that he did. We know that the stone didn’t stay in the British Royal Family though and we know that George IV had massive debts when he died so we can assume that the diamond, if he ever owned it, was probably sold to cover those debts. In case you’re wondering, George IV died at the age of 67 of honestly just overindulgence, eating and drinking way too much. He was just super overweight and unhealthy. Not a very curse-like death. Dude just like ate exquisite food and guzzled wine to his heart’s content his whole life and still managed to near double the then life expectancy. As for the jeweler Daniel Eliason, I don’t know how he died but I know he was 71 and that he was married to his sister. Unrelated but weird enough to mention. Nothing crazy seemed to have befallen Eliason.
Anyway, if George ever even owned the diamond, it was likely sold to pay off his debts. It eventually resurfaces in 1839 still in London published in a gem collection catalog. Now the stone is owned by a guy named Henry Philip Hope who is part of a wealthy banking family. Hope died almost immediately after the diamond was published in that catalog, I don’t know how. But it’s like as soon as we find out Hope owned it, he’s dead. And yet weirdly this is where the diamond gets its name from, the name we still call it today, the Hope Diamond. After Henry Philip Hope died, the diamond passed to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope who had a fairly normal life and death and then on to his grandson Lord Francis Hope who was a duke. Lord Francis had a bit of a wild life. In 1894 he married an American concert hall singer named May Yohe. Now this, I know that doesn’t seem that crazy, but this had to have been super scandalous at the time. An English duke marrying an American performer, a singer in the 1890s? My goodness the tongues would have wagged. May claimed to have worn the Hope Diamond during special occasions but Lord Francis maintained that she didn’t wear it. We think she may have worn it at least once though, on one occasion. Lord Francis and May lived well beyond their means and they soon found themselves in financial trouble and were forced to sell the Hope Diamond in 1901. Soon after that, May ran off with her lover, a guy by the name of Putman Strong, and so the couple divorced in 1902. Once again so incredibly scandalous and really just unheard of for the time, especially among the nobility like this. Life really just went downhill after that. May got married a few more times but she reportedly suffered from alcoholism and all of the marriages failed. She ended up alone and poor dying at the age of 72. I’m not totally sure what happened with Lord Francis. I know he lived to be 72 and that he may or may not have lost a foot in a hunting accident. I don’t know but May would play a big part in helping to create the legend of the cursed diamond, publicly announcing in 1921 that she believed the diamond was cursed and had ruined her life. But like, is it the diamond? Or is it your incredibly poor life choices? TBD.
So they sold the diamond in 1901 though. It ended up with a diamond dealer named Simon Frankel in New York and so the Hope Diamond made its way to the United States. Frankel has a hard time selling the Hope Diamond at first. He takes it out periodically to show it to rich Americans but no one bites. He wasn't able to sell it until 1908 when he finally finds a buyer. He sells it to a wealthy Turkish diamond collector named Selim Habib for the equivalent of 14 million dollars today. Pretty soon after though, Selim, falls into financial ruin and is forced to sell the diamond to a jewel merchant in Paris who sells it to a guy named Pierre Cartier. Pierre came from a whole family, a dynasty really, of jewelry makers. Cartier is still a high end luxury goods brand today but it was started in 1847 by Pierre’s grandfather. Pierre Cartier takes the Hope Diamond to Washington DC in 1910. He thinks he knows the perfect buyer for it.
In Washington DC there is one woman in particular, a socialite named Evalyn Walsh McLean, who might just be interested in something as gaudy and over the top as the Hope Diamond. It’s one thing to wear something like this as the Sun King in 17th century France. It’s another thing altogether to wear it in 20th century America. But Cartier hopes Evalyn McClean will take the bait. She’s certainly rich enough to afford the diamond anyway. Evalyn herself was a mining heiress. Her father, who started as an immigrant miner struck gold, literally, he discovered a gold mine in 1898 and became a multi-millionaire when Evalyn was 12 years old. Her only other sibling, her brother, died young and so Evalyn was the heiress to her father’s whole fortune. Her husband, Edward Beale McLean who went by Ned, inherited the Washington Post newspaper which his grandfather had started. So we’ve got gold mine rich and newspaper rich coming together here. The McLeans were loaded and Cartier knew it. Now he just needed to convince her to buy the Hope Diamond.
Here’s how he did that. Keeping the diamond hidden under a cloth, he began to tell Evalyn the riveting stories of its past, stolen off a Hindu statue in India, the eye of goddess, worn by the Sun King Louis the fourteenth at the Palace of Versailles, stolen after the executions of Louis the eighteenth and Marie Antoinette, owned by George the IV next. I mean, it really is a wild backstory. And Cartier didn’t hold back any of the gruesome details. He played up the curse angle. He tells her about Tavernier stealing the diamond off the Hindu statue and later being torn to shreds by a pack of wild dogs. I’m really not sure how that helps sell the diamond but apparently it does. It’s notorious, it’s infamous, it’s a statement piece and Evalyn McLean has to have it. But she doesn’t actually like it in its current setting so Cartier has it reset in the middle of a ring of white diamonds on a necklace made of still more diamonds which is what it looked like at the Smithsonian museum when I saw it years back. He presents the new and improved diamond necklace to Evalyn McLean again. She likes it but she’s still not so sure so Cartier lets her keep it for the weekend. He’s like “just hold onto it till Monday and then decide.” And this marketing scheme works. After a weekend with the Hope Diamond, Evalyn McLean absolutely has to have it and they purchase it from Cartier for a reported 10.1 million dollars in today’s money after a lot of back and forth between their attorneys.
Now, Marie Antoinette we don’t think ever wore this thing, May Yohe seems to have worn it maybe once, Evalyn McLean wears the heck out of the Hope Diamond. Honestly, she wore it super irresponsibly though. She wore it all over town to all kinds of social functions. She was known to put it around the neck of her dog, a Great Dane named Mike. She was also known to hide the necklace during social gatherings at her house and then challenge her guests to find it. But the McLean’s weren’t stupid. This was a 10 million dollar necklace. It did have protection. The New York Times reported in 1911 quote “William Schindele, a former Secret Service man, has been engaged to guard the stone. He in turn will be guarded by Leo Costello and Simeon Blake, private detectives. The stone will be kept at the McLean mansion during the day and each night will be deposited in a safe deposit vault. When Mrs. McLean wears the gem at balls and receptions arrangements have been made to keep the safe deposit building open until after the function that the stone may be safely stored away. A special automobile has been purchased to convey the guards to and from the house to the trust company's building,” end quote. So they bought a car and hired three guys to guard the Hope Diamond around the clock. Pretty wild.
But what about the curse right? The McLean’s lives seem pretty great so far. Well, disaster does strike pretty soon after purchasing the Hope Diamond in the form of a series of deaths. First, a close friend of the McLeans dies suddenly mysteriously while on a yacht with them. Evalyn recorded in her autobiography that she could do nothing but watch helplessly as her friend slipped away. Then, her mother-in-law, Ned’s mother, died of pneumonia. After that, according to Evalyn in her autobiography, she took the Hope Diamond to a Catholic priest and had it blessed. It seemed to work for a while and the McLean’s carried on tragedy free for a few years. But then, in 1919, tragedy struck again in a big way. Their son Venson was playing in the yard with some friends and ended up running out into the street. I don’t know if he was chasing a ball or what but he was hit by a car. At first it seemed like Venson was going to be okay but then, over the course of the day, he became paralyzed and eventually died, probably of internal bleeding. This was obviously a huge blow to the McLean family and they began to unravel. Ned McLean began drinking heavily and experiencing issues with his mental health. He began acting erratically and spending money recklessly which led to the forced sale of the Washington Post by trustees. He also began an extramarital relationship which led Evalyn to file for divorce in 1931. Ned was eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he died of a heart attack at the age of 52. The same year Ned died, the McLean’s twenty four year old daughter Evie met a terrible fate as well. She had married a 57 year old senator from North Carolina when she was only 19 years old, becoming his fifth wife. Can’t imagine that that was a very happy marriage. Less than five years later, Evalyn discovered her daughter dead of an apparent sleeping pill overdose. Evalyn herself would die at the age of 60 of pneumonia. The McLeans had other children too who didn’t die early tragic deaths but all of them had multiple marriages and divorces and just these really tumultuous lives.
When Evalyn died in 1947, she bequeathed the Hope Diamond to her grandchildren. However, this was overturned and trustees got permission to sell the diamond to pay off the McLean’s debts instead. They sold it to a New York diamond merchant named Harry Winston. Over the next few years Winston toured around the United States exhibiting the Hope Diamond as well as other jewels in his collection before donating it to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 1958 where it has remained ever since. Y’all Winston mailed it to the Smithsonian. He just popped it in a box and mailed it. According to Wikipedia quote “On November 10, 1958, Winston acquiesced, sending it through U.S. Mail in a box wrapped in brown paper as simple registered mail insured for $1 million at a cost of $145.29, of which $2.44 was for postage and the balance insurance,” end quote. Harry Winston died of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 83.
So, I mean, there does seem to be a lot of tragedy following this diamond around when you start trying to look for a curse. But, how much of it is undeniably out of the ordinary hard to explain curse stuff and how much of it is just confirmation bias? It seems like in a lot of these cases, they're only looking at the bad. Oh, Louis the fourteenth died a terrible slow agonizing death of gangrene. Yes, but what about all the good stuff? That’s pretty much the only bad thing that happened to the man and it was a fairly common and expected death back then. Louis the fifteenth died a terrible slow agonizing death of smallpox. Same. May Yohe and the McLeans both got divorced and dealt with substance abuse and mental health issues. Yeah, but what about all the other stuff? One was a famous musician married to an actual Duke and the other were dual heir heiress to multi-million dollar inheritances. They lived in mansions and had everything they could ever possibly want. So, it’s easy to see the curse when you only look at the bad stuff. But what about all the good stuff?
And then we have to consider how much of the curse was actually just a publicity stunt, marketing. We know Pierre Cartier used this sort of marketing to give the Hope Diamond this legendary, mythical appeal to get the McLeans to buy it, which worked. At the time he was attempting to sell it to them the newspapers were publishing all kinds of crazy claims about the curse of the Hope Diamond, most of which I didn’t even mention in this episode because they are completely unsubstantiated. In 1908 the Washington Post published an article called “Hope Diamond Has Brought Trouble to All Who Have Owned It.” In 1909 the British newspaper The Times reported quote “its possession is the story of a long series of tragedies - murder, suicide, madness, and various other misfortunes,” end quote. The New York Times had a field day with the Hope Diamond, reporting all kinds of crazy stuff for which there is no evidence. Some of these names are going to be unfamiliar to you because there isn’t even any proof that some of these people existed. Here’s just a few of the things the New York Times reported. They claimed that a guy named Jacques Colet bought the diamond from Simon Frankel and then committed suicide. Prince Ivan Kanitovski bought it from Colet and then was killed by Russian revolutionaries. Kanitovski loaned it to someone named Mlle Ladue who was quote "murdered by her sweetheart". Simon Mencharides, who had once sold it to the Turkish sultan, was thrown from a precipice along with his wife and young child. A Turkish attendant named Hehver Agha was hanged for having it in his possession. Jeweler William Fals who had recut the stone after it was stolen from France quote "died a ruined man". William Fals' son Hendrik stole the jewel from his father and later died by suicide. Some sources also say the son, Hendrik, killed his father when he stole the jewel. Newspapers also claimed that the diamond’s Turkish owner Selim Habib had drowned in a shipwreck near Singapore but that was actually a completely different person by the same name. So they’re not doing very well with the fact checking we know.
All of this is coming out in the newspapers around the time that the McLeans bought the Hope Diamond. Some of it was probably spurred on by Pierre Cartier’s marketing tactics but also remember that the McLeans themselves owned the Washington Post. They were newspaper people. There’s a good chance that a lot of this curse talk and these unsubstantiated claims coming out in the newspapers around the time the McLeans bought the diamond were all just a huge publicity stunt. Why would the McLeans want the world to think the diamond was cursed? For the same reason expert diamond salesman Pierre Cartier wanted the McLeans to think it was cursed. It increases the allure and the intrigue which increases the value of the stone itself. The McLeans bought the Hope Diamond for something like 10.1 million dollars in today’s money. Today it’s worth between 200 and 350 million dollars. So, I mean I think we can say the publicity stunt worked. Then you have May Yohe coming out in 1921 as a former owner claiming the diamond was cursed. What does she have to gain from that? Well May Yohe’s life has completely fallen apart by 1921. She left her duke husband for a series of failed relationships and ended up living in poverty. She made terrible decisions. She doesn’t want to take responsibility for ruining her own life. It’s so much easier to blame a curse. It wasn’t May Yohe’s fault, it was the curse of the Hope diamond. It becomes a convenient excuse. Evalyn McLean can lean into the curse as well when her life starts falling apart. It frees them of the weight of any fault in the matter of their own lives.
And so, do I think the curse of the Hope Diamond is real? No, I really don't. That would be kind of fun but no I don’t think it’s cursed. I think specific details of its history have been taken out of context and others have been completely fabricated to sell newspapers and hype up the value of the diamond. I think former owners like May Yohe and Evalyn McLean jumped on board with the curse idea because it freed them of any wrongdoing or guilt. They were not responsible for the bad things that happened to them.
But, you know, it is remarkable how many bad things happened to former owners of the Hope Diamond. We have the French Revolution and the brutal executions of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. We have the financial ruin and infidelity of Lord Francis and May Yohe, the utter destruction of this noble family. And then we have a series of tragic deaths, infidelity, and mental illness plaguing the McLean family and leading to ruin. It really is remarkable the level of tragedy and destruction that seemed to befall former owners of the Hope Diamond. But I think we have to consider the type of person who would own a diamond like that in the first place. I think, if there’s anything to be learned from this story, it’s not that the Hope Diamond was cursed. It’s that fame, wealth, nobility, greatness, being at the top, reaching this upper eschalon of society, does not, in most cases, bring happiness.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from the Smithsonian, Chateau du Versaille, Wikipedia, the National Institute of Demographics, and a So Supernatural podcast episode called “The Curse of the Hope Diamond.” As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.
Sources:
Comments