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97:. A British Army officer brought it to London, where it was cut by Albert Ramsay around 1905. Morgan donated the Star of India along with the rest of the collection to the American Museum of Natural History. Apart from its Sri Lankan origin, the gem's history prior to its acquisition for this collection is unknown. Kunz wrote in 1913 that the Star of India "has a more or less indefinite historic record of some three centuries".
108:. The thieves unlocked a bathroom window during museum open hours, climbed in that night, and found that the sapphire was the only gem in the collection protected by an alarm—and the battery for that was dead. The stones stolen were valued at more than $ 400,000. Within two days the culprits were arrested:
112:(also known as "Murph the Surf"), Allan Kuhn and Roger Clark; however, the gems had already been handed off. In January 1965, in a bid for leniency, Kuhn led authorities to a bus locker in Miami where the uninsured Star of India and some of the other stolen stones were recovered.
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46:, one of the largest such gems in the world. It is almost flawless and is unusual in that it has stars on both sides of the stone. The greyish-blue gem was mined in
93:; the Star of India was among the stones Kunz procured. The Star of India is a huge blue star sapphire weighing 563.35 carats. It is cut en
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On
October 29, 1964, the famous golf-ball-sized stone was stolen, along with several other gems of note, including the Midnight Star, the
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This article is about the gem known as "Star of India". For other items of the same name, see
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Dinosaurs in the Attic: An
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is believed to be the largest star sapphire at 1,404.49 carats.
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Gems and
Crystals from the American Museum of Natural History
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199:"World's largest blue star sapphire 'found in Sri Lanka'"
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297:The Curious Lore of Precious Stones
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52:American Museum of Natural History
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261:Wallace, Joseph (10 June 2000).
457:Queen Marie of Romania Sapphire
354:Sosin, Milt (January 8, 1965).
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21:Star of India (disambiguation)
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523:List of individual gemstones
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122:List of individual gemstones
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265:A Gathering of Wonders
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273:. pp. 101, 104.
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472:Serendipity Sapphire
467:St Edward's Sapphire
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447:Millennium Sapphire
331:Simon and Schuster
271:St. Martin's Press
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367:24 October
182:23 October
156:References
104:, and the
411:sapphires
208:5 January
48:Sri Lanka
116:See also
95:cabochon
67:asterism
44:sapphire
79:Tiffany
73:History
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63:rutile
133:Notes
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369:2012
335:ISBN
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
