Uncle Sam is the nickname for the largest

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 car ...

ever discovered in the United States. It was found in 1924 in

Murfreesboro, Arkansas Murfreesboro is a city in, and the county seat of, Pike County, Arkansas, United States. Its population was 1,641 at the 2010 census. The city is known for the Crater of Diamonds State Park located south of the city. History In 1906, diamonds ...

, at the Prairie Creek pipe mine, which later became known as the

Crater of Diamonds State Park Crater of Diamonds State Park is a Arkansas state park in Pike County, Arkansas, in the United States. The park features a 37.5-acre (15.2 ha) plowed field, the world's only diamond-bearing site accessible to the public. Diamonds have continuou ...

. The diamond was named "Uncle Sam" after the nickname of its finder, Wesley Oley Basham, a worker at the Arkansas Diamond Corporation. The rough diamond as originally discovered weighed 40.23 carats (8.046 g). It was faceted twice by Schenck & Van Haelen of New York, which specialized in Arkansas diamonds, handling over 14,000. The company described those diamonds as being so hard that they could only be cut using powder of other Arkansas diamonds. The final result was a 12.42-carat (2.484 g) emerald-cut gem. It was characterized as M on the

diamond color A chemically pure and structurally perfect diamond is perfectly transparent with no hue, or ''color''. However, in reality almost no gem-sized natural diamonds are absolutely perfect. The color of a diamond may be affected by chemical impurities ...

scale; this nominally corresponds to a faint yellow color, but the visual impression of Uncle Sam has been variously described as white or slight pink. Judging from the color, the diamond is most likely of pure IIa

diamond type Diamond type is a method of scientifically classifying diamonds by the level and type of their chemical impurities. Diamonds are separated into five types: Type Ia, Type Ib, Type 1aB, Type IIa, and Type IIb. The impurities measu ...

, meaning the number of impurities it has is only a few parts per million. The

clarity Clarity may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Clarity, a magic spell in the online game ''EverQuest'' * Clarity, a fictional drug from the film ''Minority Report'' Music Albums * ''Clarity'' (Jimmy Eat World album) * ...

of the stone was assessed as VVS1, which stands for ''Very Very Slightly Included'' and means the stone has minute non-diamond inclusions that are difficult for a skilled grader to see under 10x magnification. The diamond was owned by Peikin Jewelers of

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. It was lent by Peikin to the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

for temporary display and storage. According to some reports, in 1971 it was acquired by a Boston dealer, Sidney de Young, and sold for to an anonymous private collector. It was later acquired by Peter Buck, who donated it to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in June of 2022. It is displayed alongside the

Canary Diamond The Canary Diamond is an uncut canary-yellow 17.86 carat diamond found in 1917 at what is now the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. It is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The diamond was in the collection of ...

, an uncut stone found at the Arkansas site in 1917. The discovery of Uncle Sam arguably rescued the Arkansas Diamond Corporation, which had a debt over $276,470 (equivalent to $ million in ) by that time and was going to be shut down in the winter of 1924. The number of diamonds found on the surface was decreasing, and the cost of digging operations was estimated as higher than the expected diamond recovery. The value of the diamond was not sufficient to cover the debts, but the discovery lifted spirits enough to keep the surface operations going.

References

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External links

*Images of th
Uncle Sam diamond
at the ThinkQuest online library. *Another image of th
Uncle Sam diamond
at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. 1924 in Arkansas Pike County, Arkansas Diamonds originating in the United States Individual diamonds

See also

References

External links