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To help ensure it didn’t accidentally fall out of the pocket, he did, at the least, use a safety pin to secure the pouch inside the pocket. The famed 45.52 carat Hope Diamond — estimated to have formed around 1.1 billion years ago — after about four centuries of various private ownership was donated in 1958 by Harry Winston to the National Museum of Natural History for their gem collection. Rather than personally transporting the incredibly valuable diamond to said the institution, Winston simply boxed it up and put it in the regular mail, trusting that the US postal service...

The Kazanjian Red Diamond, one of the most spectacular gemstones ever discovered, goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History. Red is the rarest color in diamonds — less than 20 are known to exist in the world today. What’s more, the Kazanjian Red Diamond has an amazing back story. The gem was discovered in the 1920s in Litchenburg, South Africa. When found, it was a hefty 35 carats uncut. A diamond broker paid a modest eight pounds per carat for it. It was later sent to Amsterdam to be cut and polished by the Goudiv brothers....

New evidence unearthed in France's National Museum of Natural History shows beyond reasonable doubt that the Hope Diamond is the same steely-blue stone once sported by the Sun King, they said. Mineralogist Francois Farges, heading an investigation published in a peer-reviewed French journal, told AFP he was now "99 percent sure" that the Hope and the mythical Blue Diamond of the Crown were one and the same. "The evidence corroborates a scenario under which the diamond, after being stolen in Paris in 1792, was swiftly smuggled to London, where it was recut," he said. The Blue Diamond came from a...