Great Diamond Hoax
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Great Diamond Hoax
The diamond hoax of 1872 was a swindle in which a pair of prospectors sold a false American diamond deposit to prominent businessmen in San Francisco and New York City. It also triggered a brief diamond prospecting craze in the western United States, in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. History In 1871, veteran prospectors and cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack traveled to San Francisco. They reported a diamond mine and produced a bag full of diamonds. They stored the diamonds in the vault of the Bank of California, founded by William Chapman Ralston. Prominent financiers convinced the "reluctant" Arnold and Slack to speak out on their find. The cousins offered to lead investigators to their field. Investors hired a mining engineer to examine the field. They planted their diamonds on a remote location in northwest Colorado Territory. They then led the investors west from St. Louis, Missouri in June 1872. Arriving by train at the town of Rawlins, in the Wyomin ...
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Philip Arnold
Philip Arnold (1829–1878) was a confidence trickster from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and the brains behind the legendary diamond hoax of 1872, which fooled people into investing in a phony diamond mining operation. He managed to walk away from the hoax with more than half a million dollars. Biography Arnold was a poorly educated hatter's apprentice when he enlisted to serve in the Mexican–American War. He then went to California as part of the Gold Rush of 1849. He apparently met with some success there, as he was able to return to his native Kentucky, buy a farm, marry, and start a family. By 1870, he had returned to the West to take a job as a miner and prospector. He and his cousin John Slack obtained some industrial-grade diamonds from their friend James B. Cooper, then an assistant bookkeeper for the Diamond Drill Company of San Francisco. They mixed the diamonds in with garnets, rubies, and sapphires he bought from Indians in Arizona. Arnold and Slack took their bag of ...
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Asbury Harpending
Asbury Harpending (September 14, 1839 – January 26, 1923) was an adventurer and financier in San Francisco, California, Mexico, and New York City. Early life Harpending was born in Hopkinsville in Christian County in southwestern Kentucky. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to college but within the year he ran away to join the filibuster of General William Walker, to Nicaragua but his party was intercepted by American officials. Escaping the authorities he made his way home. His father decided to give him money and send him to California. Career Harpending made his early fortune mining in California and in Mexico prior to the American Civil War. In 1861, he joined in a conspiracy to seize San Francisco and create a "Pacific Republic" in California and Oregon, but the movement failed because of the loyalty and precautions of Colonel (Brevet Brigadier General) Albert Sidney Johnston. Later, in 1863, after traveling secretly to Richmond, Virginia, Harpending obtained a letter ...
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Diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of carbon at Standard conditions for temperature and pressure, room temperature and pressure, but diamond is metastable and converts to it at a negligible rate under those conditions. Diamond has the highest Scratch hardness, hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are used in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth. Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions are boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of lattice defect, defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (bor ...
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Wyoming Territory
The Territory of Wyoming was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 25, 1868, until July 10, 1890, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Wyoming. Cheyenne was the territorial capital. The boundaries of the Wyoming Territory were identical to those of the modern State of Wyoming. Background Because of Wyoming's location as part of the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Country, and the Mexican Cession, the land which became Wyoming has a complicated history of territorial relationships. Portions of the territory, which eventually fell under Wyoming's jurisdiction, were at various points associated with the territories of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Dakota, Nebraska, and Utah, and had previously belonged to the independent states of Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, and Texas. The portion of the Wyoming Territory east of the continental divide was acquired by the U.S. in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and organized into the Nebras ...
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Diamond Peak (Moffat County, Colorado)
Diamond Peak is a prominent mountain summit in the Green River Basin of the U.S. state of Colorado. The peak is located northwest by west ( bearing 306°) of the community of Maybell in Moffat County, Colorado, United States. Mountain Diamond Peak was the scene of a diamond salting scheme known as the Diamond hoax of 1872. It was solved by Clarence King, the noted geologist and surveyor.Winchester, Simon (2013), ''The Men Who United the States'' There are two other "Diamond Peaks" in Colorado, one in Routt County and the other in Jackson County. See also * List of Colorado mountain ranges * List of Colorado mountain summits **List of Colorado fourteeners ** List of Colorado 4000 meter prominent summits **List of the most prominent summits of Colorado *List of Colorado county high points This is a list of all 64 counties of the U.S. State of Colorado by their points of highest elevation. Of the 50 highest county high points in the United States, 30 are located in ...
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George Henry Williams
George Henry Williams (March 26, 1823April 4, 1910) was an American judge and politician. He served as chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, was the 32nd Attorney General of the United States, and was elected Oregon's U.S. senator, and served one term. Williams, as U.S. senator, authored and supported legislation that allowed the U.S. military to be deployed in Reconstruction of the southern states to allow for an orderly process of re-admittance into the United States. Williams was the first presidential Cabinet member to be appointed from the Pacific Coast. As attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, Williams continued the prosecutions that shut down the Ku Klux Klan. He had to contend with controversial election disputes in Reconstructed southern states. President Grant and Williams legally recognized P. B. S. Pinchback as the first African American state governor. Williams ruled that the ''Virginius'', a gun-running ship captured by Spain during the Virginius A ...
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United States Attorney General
The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters. The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States. Under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution, the officeholder is nominated by the president of the United States, then appointed with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. The attorney general is supported by the Office of the Attorney General, which includes executive staff and several deputies. Merrick Garland has been the United States attorney general since March 11, 2021. History Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789 which, among other things, established the Office of the Attorney General. The original duties of this officer were "to prosecute and conduct all sui ...
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General Mining Act Of 1872
The General Mining Act of 1872 is a United States federal law that authorizes and governs prospecting and mining for economic minerals, such as gold, platinum, and silver, on federal public lands. This law, approved on May 10, 1872, codified the informal system of acquiring and protecting mining claims on public land, formed by prospectors in California and Nevada from the late 1840s through the 1860s, such as during the California Gold Rush. All citizens of the United States of America 18 years or older have the right under the 1872 mining law to locate a lode (hard rock) or placer (gravel) mining claim on federal lands open to mineral entry. These claims may be located once a discovery of a locatable mineral is made. Locatable minerals include but are not limited to platinum, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, uranium and tungsten. Western miners' codes Miners and prospectors in the California Gold Rush of 1849 found themselves in a legal vacuum. Although the US federal governmen ...
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Benjamin F
Benjamin ( he, ''Bīnyāmīn''; "Son of (the) right") blue letter bible: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h3225/kjv/wlc/0-1/ H3225 - yāmîn - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (kjv) was the last of the two sons of Jacob and Rachel (Jacob's thirteenth child and twelfth and youngest son) in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition. He was also the progenitor of the Israelite Tribe of Benjamin. Unlike Rachel's first son, Joseph, Benjamin was born in Canaan according to biblical narrative. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, Benjamin's name appears as "Binyamēm" ( Samaritan Hebrew: , "son of days"). In the Quran, Benjamin is referred to as a righteous young child, who remained with Jacob when the older brothers plotted against Joseph. Later rabbinic traditions name him as one of four ancient Israelites who died without sin, the other three being Chileab, Jesse and Amram. Name The name is first mentioned in letters from King Sîn-kāšid of Uruk (1801–1771 BC), who called himself “K ...
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Samuel L
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him the third highest-grossing actor of all time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an Academy Honorary Award in 2022 as "A cultural icon whose dynamic work has resonated across genres and generations and audiences worldwide". Jackson started his career on stage making his professional theatre debut in ''Mother Courage and her Children'' in 1980 at The Public Theatre. From 1981 to 1983 he originated the role of Private Louis Henderson in '' A Soldier's Story'' Off-Broadway. He also originated the role of Boy Willie in August Wilson's ''The Piano Lesson'' in 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre. He returned to the play in the 2022 Broadway revival playing Doaker Charles. Jackson early film roles include ''Coming to Americ ...
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Tiffany And Co
Tiffany & Co. (colloquially known as Tiffany's) is a high-end luxury jewelry and specialty retailer, headquartered on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It sells jewelry, sterling silver, porcelain, crystal, stationery, fragrances, water bottles, watches, personal accessories, and leather goods. Tiffany is known for its luxury goods, particularly its diamond and sterling silver jewelry. These goods are sold at Tiffany stores, online, and corporate merchandising. Its name and branding are licensed to Coty for fragrances and to Luxottica for eyewear. Tiffany & Co. was founded in 1837 by the jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany and became famous in the early 20th century under the artistic direction of his son Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 2018 net sales totaled US$4.44 billion. In 2019 Tiffany operated 326 stores globally in countries such as the United States, Japan, and Canada, as well as Europe, the Latin America and Pacific Asia regions. On January 7, 2021, French multinational LVMH Mo ...
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Charles Lewis Tiffany
Charles Lewis Tiffany (February 15, 1812 – February 18, 1902) was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837. Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and introduced the English standard of sterling silver in imported jewelry in 1851. Biography Tiffany was born on February 15, 1812, in Killingly, Connecticut, the son of Chloe (Draper) and Comfort Tiffany. Tiffany was educated at a district school and an academy in Plainfield, Connecticut. Starting at the age of fifteen, he helped manage a small general store founded by his father, the owner of a cotton-manufacturing company. He later worked at the office of his father's mill. The Tiffany family descended from the immigrant Squire Humphrey Tiffany (England, 1630-Swansea, Massachusetts, 1685), who had lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony since 1660. In 1837, with $1,000 borrowed from his father, Tiffany and a school friend, John B. Young, se ...
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