Posted on 06/11/2021 11:51:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
At 563 carats, the Star of India is the world’s largest gem-quality blue star sapphire, and is approximately 2 billion years old. (Image credit: D. Finnin/Copyright AMNH)
==================================================================
What does the legendary Star of India — a 563-carat star sapphire the size of a golf ball — have in common with a 35-million-year-old petrified redwood slab; a massive cluster of sword-like crystals that looks like it came from "Game of Thrones;" and a 5-ton (4.5-metric ton) stone pillar that can "sing?"
You can see all of them, along with 5,000 other amazing stones, in the newly renovated Mignone Hall of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, which is reopening after a four-year closure on Saturday (June 12). There, one-of-a-kind precious gems appear alongside odd-looking rocks — some of which date to billions of years ago — that have been uniquely warped and twisted by extreme temperatures and pressures.
Individually and together, these objects tell a story of the diverse geologic processes that shape minerals on Earth's surface and deep inside our planet, beginning when the world was young and continuing to this day, museum representatives told Live Science.
Related: 13 mysterious and cursed gemstones
The Star of India, which formed about a billion years ago, was discovered in Sri Lanka in the 18th century. It is one of the best-known gems in the world, in part because it was famously and brazenly stolen from AMNH in 1964, along with several more of the museum's prized stones, by a pair of thieves named Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy and Allan Kuhn, Smithsonian reported in 2014, on the heist's 50th anniversary. (The one-of-a-kind sapphire was recovered and went back on display in 1965).
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
OK. Thanks! It’s easy to confuse me, so I try to be prepared. ;o]
Is that Envirothon, again? (I forgot!)
Well, I already used the arrow but so I'll not be repetitive.
What I can't figure out is why days seem to be just as long as they always were (and sometimes MUCH longer) but the weeks and years fly by faster as I get older.
And I don't even wanna talk about months.
That’s what I’ve used for years. Only now, I’m taking it four times a day to try and stop this thing. I’m going to have to go get some cough drops though, because as usual, with my poor pertussis-scarred lungs, colds settle in my chest.
I don’t need pneumonia, and that’s a fact!
A letter from NC today! YAY!!
I just got a phone call from Dogpatch, wanting to know if I was still interested in an apartment at the Auburn Hills property. They’re the ones that never answered my phone calls last year and called me a liar when I sent them a list of times, dates and lengths of calls. Do you think I should accept it?
HAHAHAHA!
Hahahahaha!
You could tell them what you really think, or you could just say No, thank you.
Yeah, the latter is what I’ll do, because, after all, I don’t think it’s Christ-like to repay in kind.
If I were supposed to have that one, it would have come up two weeks ago. So no. Thanks, but no. ;o]
Also, you don’t want to have anything to do with people who refuse to do their jobs and then lie about it.
While I was at Walgreen’s, picking up the morphine, I also got some cough drops (that weren’t out of date) and another box of Emergen-C. I can’t believe how much that store charges for things!!! I’m glad I don’t have to shop there very often.
Absolutely! That was the first thing I thought of. The woman identified herself, and her voice was deeper and a smidge more refined than the other one, but at the end of her message, she gave me her name, and it’s not one I recalled. The one that I left messages for was a Mc-something.
Anyway, I won’t be living in that place. My DiL says the place I’m moving into is “much nicer.” It’s “much nicer” than here, too! ;o]
So in other news, my son is laid up with his knee. DiL seems to think its the miniscus, but I don’t know. I just know that he needs to get over it before the 9th, when he’s to fly out here.
Oh, dear. He should put ice or hot packs on it!
If it would only hurt the property and not someone else on the list I’d suggest you accept it, and then cancel it after a long enough time to cause them pain.
But ... vengance is mine, saith the LORD. So I guess let Him handle it.
He’s doing all he knows how for it, considering he doesn’t know how he even hurt it. But I’ll be praying for him and he will be getting a blessing, so I expect good things.
I got some interesting information about a castle in SC in the mail. I wonder what it would be like to live like that?
Ohwell... If I were supposed to, I would be.
Nah. I did that once. Actually, if I had been planning to stay in the area, I would have moved into St George, but by the time they sent me the letter saying an opening was available, I had decided to move to Dogpatch.
That first property in Dogpatch is the one that contacted me today, so things have worked out the way they were supposed to, even though it set me back a full year. Things happen that way, so there isn’t much I can do but learn to roll with the punch.
Scenic, but also humid, and probably buggy. At the time the Huntingtons lived there, the east windows had ocean views, but in the ensuing 80 years or so, the dunes have piled and trees grown up, so you can hear the ocean but not see it.
They lived there in the winter, so it wasn’t always hot.
Unless those rooms were very, very large, it looks to me like a lot of people would be crowded in there during the times the Huntingtons lived there, even if it was only seasonal.
It sounds like what Oregon Dunes was like. There was a campground there, but in order to see the ocean, you had to climb up over these very, very tall dunes. And then you had to hope for no fog. FS got lost there when we were getting ready to move back to civilization. He was on leave before being stationed in Germany. He had fun, though!
The rooms are fairly modest in size, comparable to those in my house. The largest areas are the sculpture studios.
They weren’t very sociable, didn’t usually have guests, which helped avoid crowding.
Ah. Sort of like my ex-late in-laws.
;o]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.