FANCY THAT

Want a little GEM or NUGGET to wow your friends with? Here are some of the strangest…

◆ The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that diamonds were made of the tears of the gods, or splinters from twinkling stars. ◆ Cleopatra was known to have been particularly fond of peridot and emeralds.

◆ The largest loose diamond in the world is the Paragon Diamond, weighing in at 137.82 carats.

◆ The Heart Of The Ocean from the movie Titanic is not entirely fiction – it’s believed a rather large sapphire went down with the doomed liner. ◆ Crystals that are cut and polished are gemstones – some considered more valuable than others. Diamonds are the rarest. ◆ Organic gems are those created by living organisms that have been mineralised – pearls are the most commonly known. ◆ Diamond is the hardest crystal, and graphite is the softest, yet they are both made of carbon; the difference is due to the different arrangement of their molecules. ◆ “Carat” comes from the Greek keration or “carob bean” which was used as a standard for weighing small quantities. A Carat is about 200mg, or 0.007 of an ounce.

Less than 20% of gemstones worldwide are of true gem quality When Richard Burton bought Elizabeth Taylor the heart-shaped Taj-Mahal diamond he is said to have boasted, “It has so many carats, it’s almost a turnip!”

◆ The softest gemstone is amber, made from fossilised tree sap and so light it floats on salt water. ◆ The most common crystals you may already be familiar with are table salt, snowflakes, sugar and pencil lead.

◆ Some of the largest natural crystals in the world are found in the

Cave of Crystals in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico – some are up to 6 feet in diameter and 36 feet long, weighing up to 55 tons.

The famous Hope Diamond is the world’s biggest deep blue diamond, weighing in at 45.52 carats

◆ There are three categories of gems: Precious Gemstones, Semiprecious Gemstones and Organic Gemstones.