Diamond Facts

  • Every diamond is immensely old, formed long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. The youngest diamond is 900 million years old.

  • The world’s largest gem quality diamond, the Cullinan, was found in South Africa in 1905. Uncut, it weighed 3,106 carats (approximately the size of an ostrich egg).

  • Diamond is the hardest natural substance known to man. It is 58 times harder than the next hardest mineral on earth.

  • Only diamond can cut diamond.

  • Diamonds exist in all colours; the rarest of all colours is red.

  • If you were to gather all the diamonds ever polished since the beginning of time, they would fill only one double-decker bus.

  • The very word ‘diamond’ comes from the Greek term adamas meaning unconquerable.

  • The famous slogan, ‘A Diamond Is Forever’ was created in 1947. It was voted the best slogan of the 20th century by Advertising Age.

  • The word ‘carat’ comes from the carob tree whose seed was used for centuries as the standard of weighing precious stones.

  • The custom of wearing a diamond ring on the fourth finger of the left hand comes from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the vena amoris (‘vein of love’) runs directly from this finger to the heart.

  • Diamonds are composed of almost pure carbon. Although one of the earth’s most common substances, making graphite and pencil lead, only in extremely rare circumstances and over billions of years does it manifest itself as the world’s most precious gem.