10 Amazing Facts About Diamonds

Since centuries, diamonds have been the most precious gemstone that every human being desires. Though a diamond is said to be a girl’s best friend but men too are fond of diamond. While women wear it as a pride, a man definitely chooses a diamond ring to express his love. The reason behind the fascination for diamond is perhaps due to the process that it undergoes from being ordinary carbon to an extraordinary diamond. There are a number of amazing facts that you must know about diamonds before you call yourself a true diamond lover.

1. The word diamond is derived from the Greek word “adamas” which means one which cannot be destroyed.


2. Diamond is said to be the hardest natural substance as nothing can scratch a diamond except another diamond.


3. Cupid, the god of love in Roman mythology is represented as a boy with an arrow in his hand and is believed to have diamonds in the tip of the arrow, perhaps the true association of love with diamonds.


4. Diamonds were first mined in India, around 2500 B.C as alluvial deposits along the river bed of Penner, Krishna and Godavari rivers. However the industry of diamond cutting started in Rome from 1330. Today diamond is mined all around the world with some of the world’s most brilliant diamond coming from Canada, Russia, Botswana and Namibia.


5. Artificial diamonds are manufactured nowadays with a technique called the Chemical Vapor Deposition by which scientists are able to grow diamonds and which are virtually indistinguishable from the natural diamond.


6. It is believed that when a diamond is gifted to a person whom you love it gives inner strength, courage and faith to the one whom it is gifted.


7. An engagement ring is worn on the ring finger or the fourth finger and this tradition is believed to originate from the Egyptian belief that the vein of love runs from the heart of a person to the top of the fourth finger or ring finger.


8. The Archduke Maxmillan of Austria first gifted a diamond engagement ring and proposed his beloved Mary of Burgundy in 1447.


9. The Cullinan was the largest diamond that was discovered in the mines of South Africa in 1905. The 3106 carat diamond weighed 1.33 pounds and was handed over to King Edward. The Cullinan was cut into nine large diamonds and hundred small diamonds, out of which the three large diamonds form a part of the crown jewels in the Tower of London.


10. Diamonds are not rare on Earth but they are in space as well. Astronomer Travis Metcalfe of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered in 2004 that there is a diamond star worth 10 billion trillion carats in the space. This star is located in the Centaurus collection and is made of crystallized carbon and is named after the Beatles song, “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.

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