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FILE 053 · VOL IX · Do Not Touch the Exhibit
The Hope Diamond Came by Mail. The Mailman's Life Fell Apart.
It is not cursed. It simply remembers every hand that ever wanted it.
Based on: The Hope Diamond Curse
Intake record
| Recovered from | Locker of a former Smithsonian night security officer, Washington, D.C. |
|---|---|
| Contents | Shift logs (2009 to 2014), an ultraviolet flashlight, a resignation letter |
| Finder | Facilities staff |
| Status | The officer's resignation letter was accepted. He has asked not to be named. |
Recovered file
The Hope Diamond is one of the most famous objects on Earth. It sits in a glass case in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., where it is seen by millions of people every year. It weighs 45.52 carats. It is a deep, impossible blue. [1]
It has been passed from hand to hand for more than three and a half centuries. In 1668, a French merchant named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier sold a large blue diamond, from India, to King Louis XIV. It was cut into a stone called the French Blue and worn by French royalty. In 1792, during the French Revolution, it was stolen from the royal treasury. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed the following year. The diamond disappeared, and reappeared in London in 1812, recut, smaller. [1]
It passed to a banker named Henry Philip Hope, whose name it still carries. Then to a series of owners, many of whom suffered spectacular misfortunes, which jewelers and newspapers happily exaggerated to make the stone more famous. The last private owner, the Washington socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, wore it constantly. Her eldest son died in a car accident at nine. Her husband left her and died in a psychiatric hospital. Her daughter died of an overdose at twenty-five. McLean herself died in debt. [1]
In 1958, the jeweler Harry Winston, who had bought it from her estate, donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian. He sent it by registered first-class mail, in a plain brown package. The postage was two dollars and forty-four cents. Insurance of a million dollars cost about a hundred and forty-three more. [2]
The mail carrier who delivered it to the museum was a man named James Todd. Within a year, according to the Smithsonian's own postal museum, Todd was injured in two separate car accidents, his wife died of a heart attack, his dog strangled on its leash, and a fire partially destroyed his home. [2]
Todd himself always said he did not believe in the curse.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 053 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
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