The Hope Diamond, Cursed?

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Why the Hope Diamond Was Rumored to Be Cursed and More Fun Facts About America's Artifacts 

NOVEMBER 9, 2013 – 5:00 AM – 0 COMMENTS

By VI-AN NGUYEN@vian_nguyen

The new book The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objectsunveils fresh facts about our national treasures.

(Courtesy of Smithsonian Museum)

1. The Hope Diamond was once rumored to carry a curse.

“There had been, over the years—even decades—numerous stories about how the Hope Diamond carried an ancient curse,” author Richard Kurin writes. So when Harry Winston donated the gem, many citizens urged the Smithsonian not to accept. “If the Smithsonian was a national museum and it acquired the Hope Diamond, then the country would own it—and might then the American people be cursed? ‘Turn it down,’ urged many letter writers to the Smithsonian and President Eisenhower.”

“The curse story was made up, a modern folktale concocted by French jeweler Pierre Cartier in Paris in 1910 to entice an ultrarich American, Evalyn Walsh McLean, to buy the gem,” Kurin explains. “Over the years, entertainer May Yohe, who had once been Mrs. Hope [she was once wed to Lord Francis Hope, whose family had owned the jewel], publicized and dramatized the story, as did McLean herself. They attributed deaths, revolutions, bankruptcy, and divorce to the stone’s malevolent curse.”