The National Insider gets meta- physical in this fanciful story published today in 1963 about a cursed gemstone killing Marilyn Monroe. They’re talking about the Moon of Baroda, left, a 24-carat yellow diamond found in western India and owned for almost five-hundred years by a royal dynasty known as the Gaekwad Maharajas, and briefly by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who was the only female monarch of the Hapsburg Dynasty.
Sounds like something that absolutely needs to be stolen, right? But before you break out your ski mask and suction cups, you should know that the diamond supposedly brings grave misfortune to anyone who carries it across the sea. Maybe that explains why its eventual American owner, Meyer Rosenbaum of Detroit’s Meyer Jewellery Company, gave the stone to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe wore it while filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, during which she performed her immortal materialist ditty “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” That was in 1953. Monroe lived nine more years, and we’re pretty sure she had some laughs during that span, so it’s a stretch to say the diamond did her in, but it makes a great story.
In our research we actually discovered that most famous diamonds have curses associated with them, including the Hope Diamond (whose first owner was supposedly torn apart by wild dogs), the Kahinoor Diamond (which can only be safely worn by women), and the Black Orlov (three of whose owners committed suicide). Interestingly, all of these diamonds came from India, and two are said to have been pried loose from the eyes of Hindu gods. So basically, you mess with Brahma and you get the horns.
We love the idea of karma, the possibility that evildoing will get you killed and reincarnated as a louse in the ass of a water buffalo, but perhaps a more scientific way of looking at all this is simply that diamonds are forever and we are not. Thus misfortune of one sort or another is always waiting for us humans, while our diamonds always survive to be passed along to the next mere mortal. But just to be on the safe side, we’ve told our girlfriends that we will never give them diamonds, or for that matter jewelry of any sort. It’s for their own good, really.
