The Hope Diamond is a huge blue diamond that weighs about 45 carats. People have called it the most famous diamond in the world.
For hundreds of years, stories have spread about how this beautiful stone brings terrible luck to anyone who owns it. The diamond first came from India in the 1600s. It belonged to French kings for many years until thieves stole it during the French Revolution in 1792.
In 1910, a rich woman from Washington named Evalyn Walsh McLean saw the diamond for the first time. According to Wikipedia, a jeweler named Pierre Cartier brought it to show her and her husband Edward. She did not like it at first and said no.
But Cartier was smart about selling. He changed how the diamond looked by putting it in a newer setting. He also made her curious by keeping it wrapped up while he told her scary stories about its past. When he finally showed it to her, she could not look away.
She thought it would bring her good luck
The McLeans paid more than $300,000 for the Hope Diamond in 1911. Even though people warned her about the curse, Mrs. McLean said she thought of it as a “good luck charm” instead. She loved wearing it to fancy parties and showing it off to her friends.
Sometimes she would hide the diamond somewhere in her big house during parties and let guests search for it like a treasure hunt. But sad things kept happening to the family. Their young son Vinson died when he was only 9 years old after a car hit him.
Years later, their daughter Evalyn killed herself. Edward McLean started having serious mental problems and the couple split up in 1932. He died when he was around 51 or 52 years old. Mrs. McLean got pneumonia and died in 1947 when she was 60.
Most experts think the curse is just a made up story
People who study diamonds and history say there is not much real proof that the Hope Diamond causes bad luck. A lot of the scary stories about it were just made up by newspapers and people selling jewelry in the early 1900s.
They wanted to make the diamond seem more interesting and worth more money. Even Pierre Cartier probably added extra drama to the stories to get Mrs. McLean excited about buying it.
Major outlets wrote stories in 1908 and 1911 about all the people who supposedly got hurt because of the diamond. The articles said owners were killed in terrible ways or went crazy or lost everything they had.
But when people looked into these claims later, they found out most of them were lies or had nothing to do with the diamond at all. One story said the man who first brought the diamond from India got eaten by wild dogs. But that was not true because records show Jean-Baptiste Tavernier lived until he was 84 and died peacefully.
A lot of the curse stories probably came from books and not from real life. In 1868, a writer named Wilkie Collins wrote a novel called The Moonstone about a stolen diamond from India that brought bad luck. This became a popular idea in stories and films. The Hope Diamond fit right into this kind of tale, similar to other cursed objects that have captured public imagination.
After Mrs. McLean died, a jeweler named Harry Winston bought the diamond in 1949. He took it around America to let people see it. Then in 1958, he gave it away to the Smithsonian museum in Washington. The diamond is still there today.
Since the museum got it, nothing bad has happened. A person who works at the Smithsonian said the diamond has actually brought them good luck because more people come to visit and they have been able to get more beautiful gems for their collection. The diamond is now worth about $250 million and sits behind thick bulletproof glass where anyone can see it. Like cursed films that became legendary in Hollywood, the Hope Diamond’s spooky reputation only made it more famous.
