Interesting Facts

The world's most expensive diamond (to date) was sold at Sotheby's in Geneva, for ... wait for it - £52m. (The Pink Star, which would look good on any Barbie doll, is supposedly the largest internally flawless fancy pink vivid diamond (measuring 2.69cm x 2.06cm) that the Gemmological Institute of American has ever graded. Estimated to sell for at least £38 million, the diamond attracted four bidders and finally sold for $83,187,381 (£52, 024,735.83), which is a world auction record for a diamond and any gemstone or jewel. You can watch the insanity here:- )

According to scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1,000 tonnes of diamonds a year are being created on Saturn. (These diamonds, which are big enough to be worn as jewellery, could be raining down on Saturn and Jupiter. Seemingly, lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which, as it falls, hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond. And you just thought it was a rock.  Remember - rock is slang for a diamond or other gemstone.)

The Duke of Edinburgh was given a baby elephant when visiting Sri Lanka. (In fact, the Royal family usually receive presents when they go on holidays (sorry - state visits), and some of them are quite ridiculous. Princess Anne was given a brown Syrian bear by the then Soviet Union. Prince Andrew was given a newborn Gambian crocodile. The Queen was given a pair of sloths in Brazil in 1968. It's not always animals either. Prince Andrew was given two bags of basmati rice by the Pakistan High Commission 2008 the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were given two wristbands, two baseball caps, four T-shirts and 18 CDs by the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica. When the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer, she received a pair of 100-year-old silk mittens, a silver-plated mousetrap and, most esoteric of all, a piece of crocheted lace made from yarn spun by Mahatma Gandhi. Other gifts have included a box of volcanic ash from Montserrat, a yellow metal hatpin from J...

When he donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958, jeweller Harry Winston sent the fabled gem by registered first-class mail. (It cost $145.29 to post, the stamps cost $2.44 the rest was for insurance. Why doesn't anyone ever send me diamonds?)

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have discovered the largest diamond in the galaxy. It is 10 billion trillion trillion carats. (It measures 4,000 km across, and lies some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It's actually a crystallised white dwarf, the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk, and the carbon interior has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond. It is technically known as BPM 37093, but astronomers have decided to call it "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. According to Travis Metcalfe, the leader of the team who discovered it, you would need a jeweller's loupe the size of the Sun to grade it.) Source: BBC News

The largest diamond on Earth is the 546-carat Golden Jubilee. (It was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa in 1985. The rough stone it was cut from weighed 755 carats. It was named "Golden Jubilee" when it was presented to the King of Thailand in 1997 for his Golden Jubilee. Before that it had the uninspiring name of "the Unnamed Brown".)

powered by ODEO The world's most expensive iPod has gone up for sale at a charity auction in London. (Supposedly an iPod is a must-have item, and this bejewelled version has an estimated value of £20,000. The iDiamond shuffle (yes, they really called it that) is made of solid 18 carat white and pink gold and kitted out with 430 diamonds. Tasteful.) Source ITN