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Henri Lemoine (fraudster)
Henri Lemoine (''fl.'' 1905–1908) was a French fraudster who claimed to be able to produce synthetic diamonds. Fraud In 1905, Lemoine contacted Sir Julius Wernher, British banker and one of the governors of De Beers Diamond Mines. He said he had discovered a process to produce gem-sized diamonds from coal and agreed to sell his invention if Wernher would be willing to invest to further his research. He invited Wernher to his laboratory in Paris to witness the process. Wernher took Francis Oats, a De Beers executive, and two other associates with him. Lemoine invited his guests in and left the room; moments later he reappeared naked, to prove that he was not concealing any diamonds in his clothing. He mixed a number of substances including iron filings and coal into a small crucible, showed the mixture to his guests, and placed it into a furnace in the center of the room. After fifteen minutes, Lemoine removed the hot crucible and let it cool. Then he picked a pair of tweeze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French People
The French people (french: Français) are an ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France. The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily the descendants of Gauls (including the Belgae) and Romans (or Gallo-Romans, western European Celtic and Italic peoples), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norse also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans. Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany, Occi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fraudster
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensation) or criminal law (e.g., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities), or it may cause no loss of money, property, or legal right but still be an element of another civil or criminal wrong. The purpose of fraud may be monetary gain or other benefits, for example by obtaining a passport, travel document, or driver's license, or mortgage fraud, where the perpetrator may attempt to qualify for a mortgage by way of false statements. Internal fraud, also known as "insider fraud", is fraud committed or attempted by someone within an organisation such as an employee. A hoax is a distinct concept that involves deliberate deception without the intention of gain or of materially damaging or depriving a victi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthetic Diamond
Lab-grown diamond (LGD; also called laboratory-grown, laboratory-created, man-made, artisan-created, artificial, synthetic, or cultured diamond) is diamond that is produced in a controlled technological process (in contrast to naturally formed diamond, which is created through geological processes and obtained by mining). Unlike diamond simulants (imitations of diamond made of superficially-similar non-diamond materials), synthetic diamonds are composed of the same material as naturally formed diamonds – pure carbon crystallized in an isotropic 3D form – and share identical chemical and physical properties. Numerous claims of diamond synthesis were reported between 1879 and 1928; most of these attempts were carefully analyzed but none was confirmed. In the 1940s, systematic research of diamond creation began in the United States, Sweden and the Soviet Union, which culminated in the first reproducible synthesis in 1953. Further research activity yielded the discoveries of HP ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius Wernher
Sir Julius Charles Wernher, 1st Baronet (9 April 1850 – 21 May 1912) was a German-born Randlord and art collector who became part of the English establishment. Life history Born in Darmstadt, Hesse, Wernher was the son of Elisabeth (Weidenbusch) and Friedrich Augustus Wernher, a railway engineer of Protestant stock. He was educated at Frankfurt-am-Main, where he entered a merchant bank. In 1871, having served in the Franco-German War, he moved to London at the age of 21. His talent for business was spotted by a diamond dealer named Jules Porgès of London and Paris, who sent Wernher in 1873 as his agent to the diamond mines of Kimberley, South Africa to buy and export diamonds. Wernher bought up mining interests and by 1875 was a member of the Kimberley mining board. In that same year, Porgès and Alfred Beit joined him in Kimberley, and Porgès formed the ''Compagnie Française des Mines de Diamants du Cap.'' Porgès returned to London after having made Wernher and Beit partn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Beers
De Beers Group is an international corporation that specializes in diamond mining, diamond exploitation, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial and coastal mining. It operates in 35 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Canada and Australia. From its inception in 1888 until the start of the 21st century, De Beers controlled 80% to 85% of rough diamond distribution and was considered a monopoly. Competition has since dismantled the complete monopoly; the De Beers Group now sells approximately 29.5% of the world's rough diamond production by value through its global sightholder and auction sales businesses. The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank. In 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German immigrant to Britain and later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Oats
Francis Oats (29 October 1848 – 1 September 1918) was a Cornish miner who became chairman of De Beers diamond company. He made extensive investments in the Cornish tin mining industry, which collapsed after he had died. He is known for Porthledden, a mansion he built at the tip of Cornwall. Early years Francis Oats was born on 29 October 1848, at South Torfrey Farm, Golant, near Fowey, Cornwall, England, in the parish of St Sampson. His parents were Francis Oats (1794–1871) and Maria Rundle (1810–97). His father was a farmer. His younger sister Maria was born in 1850. The family moved to St Just in Penwith, a mining district, about 1854. Like most young men in the district Oats became a miner when he left school, but every week he would walk to Penzance, seven miles away, to attend evening classes so he could become a mining engineer. At the age of 17, Oats placed second in the mineralogy examination for the British Isles, and obtained a high grade in mining, a subject i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crucible
A crucible is a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures. While crucibles were historically usually made from clay, they can be made from any material that withstands temperatures high enough to melt or otherwise alter its contents. History Typology and chronology The form of the crucible has varied through time, with designs reflecting the process for which they are used, as well as regional variation. The earliest crucible forms derive from the sixth/fifth millennium B.C. in Eastern Europe and Iran. Chalcolithic Crucibles used for copper smelting were generally wide shallow vessels made from clay that lacks refractory properties which is similar to the types of clay used in other ceramics of the time. During the Chalcolithic period, crucibles were heated from the top by using blowpipes.Hauptmann A., 2003, ''Developments in copper Metallurgy During the Fourth and Third Millennia B.C. at Feinan'', Jorda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous English title translation of ''Remembrance of Things Past''), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Background Proust was born on 10 July 1871 at the home of his great-uncle in the Paris Borough of Auteuil (the south-western sector of the then-rustic 16th arrondissement), two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place at the very beginning of the Third Republic, during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the Republic. Much of ''In Search of Lost Time'' concerns the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confidence Tricksters
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ..intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men') at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". Terminology Synonyms include con, confidence game, confidence scheme, ripoff, scam, and stratagem. The perpetrator of a confidence trick (or "con trick") is often referred to as a confidence (or "con") man, con-artist, or a "grifter". The shell game dates back at least to Ancient Greece. Samuel Thompson (1821–1856) was the original "confidence man". Thompson was a clumsy swindler who asked his victims to express confidence in him by giving him money or their watch rather than gaining their confidenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Fraudsters
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Fortnite French places Arts and media * The French (band), a British rock band * "French" (episode), a live-action episode of ''The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!'' * ''Française'' (film), 2008 * French Stewart (born 1964), American actor Other uses * French (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * French (tunic), a particular type of military jacket or tunic used in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union * French's, an American brand of mustard condiment * French catheter scale, a unit of measurement of diameter * French Defence, a chess opening * French kiss, a type of kiss involving the tongue See also * France (other) * Franch, a surname * French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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