99 Fun Facts About Gemstones

Which purple stone, its Greek name meaning 'not drunk', was a 'cardinal' gem until Brazilian finds made it common?

Amethyst was worn by ancient Greek drinkers as a charm against the effects of wine, and it stayed as costly as emerald until Brazil's large deposits were discovered.

Which blue-violet gem, found in 1967 in the Mererani Hills, did Tiffany & Co. rename and launch in 1968?

Tanzanite is the name Tiffany & Co. gave blue-violet zoisite in 1968, judging the mineral's real name too unappealing to sell. It is mined commercially in just one small area on Earth, near Mount Kilimanjaro.

Which aluminium-oxide mineral goes by one gem name when red and another in every other colour?

Corundum is prized as a jewel when clear and coloured, yet its dull black form is emery, crushed for the grit on emery boards because the mineral rates 9 on the Mohs hardness scale.

Which word comes from the Greek for amber, a resin that attracts bits of straw once it is rubbed?

Electricity, electric and their relatives all descend from elektron, the Greek for amber, which bears a static charge when rubbed. Persian called the stone kah-ruba, 'straw-snatcher', and that word became the Arabic for electricity too.

Which gem, classed as a mineraloid because it has no crystal structure, did NASA announce in 2008 it had found on Mars?

Opal is hydrated silica, a telltale sign of water: NASA said the deposits its orbiter found showed that Mars stayed wet a billion years longer than scientists had believed.

The first working laser, built by Theodore Maiman in 1960, used a synthetic rod of which gem as its light source?

Ruby, grown synthetically, was the gain medium in the laser Maiman fired at Hughes Research Laboratories on 16 May 1960. A xenon flashtube pumps the rod with light, and the same trace atoms that colour the crystal red do the lasing.

Which royal bride chose her own 12-carat oval sapphire ring from Garrard, the ring William gave Catherine in 2010?

Diana Spencer picked the ring herself in 1981: a 12-carat oval sapphire ringed by 14 diamonds. William said that giving it to Catherine was his way of making sure his mother 'didn't miss out' on the day.

Which mineral did the ancient Greeks call 'krystallos', thinking its clear form was ice frozen too hard to melt?

Quartz was krystallos, from kryos, 'icy cold', because Theophrastus and others believed clear rock crystal was permanently frozen water, an idea Pliny the Elder still held. Every 'crystal' in English descends from that mistake.

A pearl is built up in layers of which iridescent material, the same stuff that lines a mollusc's shell?

Nacre, better known as mother of pearl, is laid down by the same living process whether it coats the shell's interior or wraps an intruder into a pearl. It is calcium carbonate, mostly aragonite, deposited in concentric layers.

Which country, home to the Muzo mines, has historically been the world's largest producer of emeralds?

Colombia's Muzo district also yields rare 'trapiche' emeralds, crossed by six dark spokes and named after the Spanish for a sugar mill because the pattern looks like its grinding wheel.

The 423-carat Logan Sapphire, the size of a chicken egg, came from which island, original home of the padparadscha?

Sri Lanka produced the Logan Sapphire, which Rebecca Guggenheim received as a Christmas and anniversary present and gave to the Smithsonian in 1960. A 1997 GIA report found its blue natural, with no heat treatment.

Which pale-blue gem shares the beryl family with emerald, its largest cut example being Brazil's Dom Pedro?

Aquamarine takes its name from the Latin for sea water, and sailors once carried it as a charm against shipwreck. The Dom Pedro is a 14-inch obelisk carved by Bernd Munsteiner, now at the Smithsonian.

Which green gem, an August birthstone, turns up inside pallasite meteorites as well as in volcanic basalt?

Peridot is gem-quality olivine, and large clean crystals are rare on Earth because the mineral breaks down so readily at the surface. A few crystals from meteorites are big enough to facet as cut gems.

Which January birthstone, really a family of minerals, is said to take its name from the pomegranate and its red seeds?

Garnet has been worn as a gem for thousands of years. Prospectors also follow certain garnets through soil and streams, because the same deep volcanic rock that carries diamonds brings them to the surface.

Diamond is metastable at room temperature and pressure, converting at a negligible rate into which other form of carbon?

Graphite is the stable form of carbon under everyday conditions, but diamond converts to it at a negligible rate, so the change is academic. In graphite the atoms bond in planes that slip past each other, which is why it is soft.

Which cut polishes a gem into a smooth dome instead of facets, the way to show a star or a cat's eye?

Cabochon, from the Middle French for 'head', was the usual way to finish a gem before faceting developed, and it is still the cut for opaque stones. The dome shows the star in a star sapphire that faceting would hide.

A diamond's rainbow flashes, which jewellers call 'fire', come from which optical property of the stone?

Dispersion, the splitting of white light into colours, is what the trade calls fire. A cutter balances it against brilliance: a smaller table facet shows more fire but returns less white light.

Jet, the black stone Queen Victoria wore in mourning for Prince Albert, is a form of what?

Fossil wood, squeezed over millions of years into lignite, the lowest rank of coal, is what jet is, commonly from trees akin to the Chilean pine. Victorian mourning made it the fashion, and it gave English the phrase 'jet-black'.

Red 'precious' coral, the Corallium rubrum carved into jewellery since antiquity, grows mainly in which sea?

Mediterranean waters are the main home of Corallium rubrum, which grows on dark rocky seabeds in the depths or in caves. Coral jewellery turns up in prehistoric European burials, and the material is too soft to facet, so it is cut as beads.

The Sar-i Sang mines, which have supplied lapis lazuli for more than 6,000 years, lie in which modern country?

Afghanistan's Badakhshan province supplied the lapis in Tutankhamun's funeral mask and served the Persian and Mesopotamian civilisations, and its mines are still producing. Sar-i Sang sits in the Kokcha River valley.

Which pigment, ground from lapis lazuli, did Renaissance painters often reserve for the Virgin Mary's clothing?

Ultramarine, ground from imported lapis, was used by Masaccio, Titian and Vermeer, and has even turned up in the dental tartar of a woman buried at a medieval German convent, most likely from licking her brush.

Pliny the Elder claims which queen dissolved a pearl worth millions of sesterces in vinegar to win a dinner-party bet?

Cleopatra's stunt has real chemistry behind it: pearls are mostly calcium carbonate, which the acetic acid in vinegar turns into calcium acetate and carbon dioxide, though not as instantly as Pliny's tale has it.

Moissanite, first found in 1893 in rock from Arizona's Meteor Crater, is a natural form of which compound?

Silicon carbide crystals from the crater were first taken for diamonds by Henri Moissan, who identified them correctly only years later. Edward Acheson had already made the compound artificially in 1891, two years before the natural find.

Which Washington socialite bought the Hope Diamond from Pierre Cartier in 1911, curse stories and all?

Evalyn Walsh McLean bought it after Cartier's slow-burn presentation; the tales of a cursed origin were most likely invented in the early 1900s to add mystique and lift the price.

The Regent Diamond, mined in India and cut in London, was set in the sword of which French ruler?

Napoleon wore the Regent on his sword, where Louis XV had worn it in his coronation crown. It was stolen with the other crown jewels in 1792, recovered, and went on show in the Louvre in 1887.

Coober Pedy, a gem-mining town where many residents live in underground 'dugouts', lies in which country?

Australia's Coober Pedy dates from 1915, when a boy in his father's gold-prospecting party found the first gems there. Residents dug their homes into the hills to escape the scorching desert heat.

Which of jade's two minerals did China carve for millennia before Burmese jadeite arrived in quantity around 1800?

Nephrite reached China's carvers mainly from Khotan, on the Silk Road. Its name means 'kidney stone', from the old belief that wearing it eased pain in the kidneys, the same idea behind the Spanish phrase that gave English 'jade'.

Alexandrite, green by daylight and red under incandescent light, is a rare variety of which mineral?

Chrysoberyl is a different mineral from beryl despite the name. Alexandrite turned up in Russia's Urals in the 1830s and was named for the young heir Alexander II, its red and green echoing the colours of the Russian empire.

Which Myanmar valley, forced open by the British in 1886, was for centuries the main source of 'pigeon's blood' stones?

Mogok has produced sought-after stones for more than five centuries. The finest seem to glow because the crystal fluoresces, re-emitting red light on top of its own colour, the look the trade calls 'pigeon's blood'.

Neon-blue 'Paraíba' tourmaline, named after a Brazilian state, owes its electric colour mainly to which metal?

Copper gives the neon colour, in stones first found in the late 1980s. Labs now apply 'Paraíba' to copper-bearing tourmaline from Nigeria and Mozambique too, because the name has come to mark the metal, not the place.

The pink-orange sapphire called padparadscha, one of the costliest fancy colours, is named after which flower?

Lotus blossom gives padparadscha its name, which means 'lotus colour'. Since about 2001 a beryllium treatment has been able to turn other sapphires a similar pink-orange, and spotting it can take a laboratory's trace-element analysis.

The six-rayed star in a star sapphire is usually caused by fine needle inclusions of which titanium-dioxide mineral?

Rutile needles, the 'silk' of the trade, lie in several directions and reflect light into the star, an effect called asterism. It is a rare case of inclusions making a gem worth more, not less.

Which country's Mount Smaragdus mines, worked on an industrial scale by Rome, supplied the ancient world's emeralds?

Egypt's mines on Mount Smaragdus were worked on an industrial scale by the Roman and Byzantine empires and later by Islamic rulers. They faded once far richer deposits were found in the New World; only ruins remain.

The Amber Room, which vanished in World War II, was a 1716 gift to Peter the Great from which kingdom's ruler?

Prussia's Frederick William I gave Peter the room while the two were allies against Sweden. German troops carried it off to Königsberg during the war and the trail ends there; a replica now stands in the Catherine Palace.

Which udon-seller's son produced his first cultured pearls in the 1890s, after years of failed attempts at oyster farming?

Kokichi Mikimoto created hemispherical cultured pearls in the early 1890s, having started his first farm with a loan in 1888 and his wife Ume as partner, and went on to found the luxury pearl company that still bears his name.

Deep-blue stones of which November birthstone mostly began pale or colourless, then were irradiated and heated?

Topaz is plentiful when colourless, so the treated blues are inexpensive, while natural blue crystals are quite rare. November's own stone is the orange 'precious topaz', which shares the month with citrine.

Yogo sapphires, cornflower blue straight out of the ground and never heat-treated, are mined in which US state?

Montana's Yogo Gulch yields stones whose colour is right as found, a rarity in a trade where heating sapphires is common. Gold prospectors noticed its blue pebbles for years before anyone recognised them as sapphires.

Sapphires from which region's Paddar Valley, mined mainly in the 1880s, are among the most coveted gems of all?

Kashmir stones owe their velvety look to tiny inclusions that scatter the light. A landslide exposed the deposit around 1881, and the great finds came in just a few years, from 1882 to 1887.

Which blue diamond, once in the Bavarian crown jewels, did Laurence Graff controversially recut after buying it in 2008?

The Wittelsbach lost over four carats in the recut and became the Wittelsbach-Graff; critics said its historical integrity was compromised, while Graff replied that to create beauty 'is not a sin'.

Which French chemist's flame-fusion process, made public in 1902, first grew synthetic gems on a commercial scale?

Auguste Verneuil, once Edmond Frémy's assistant, lodged sealed notes with the Paris Academy of Sciences in the early 1890s and announced the method only in 1902. Swiss 'Geneva' stones are now thought to be earlier flame-fusion products.

St Edward's Sapphire, reputedly from the Confessor's coronation ring, tops the cross on which piece of British regalia?

The Imperial State Crown, not St Edward's Crown, carries the stone, above its monde. Legend says Edward gave the ring to a beggar who proved to be St John the Evangelist; it was taken from his tomb in the 12th century.

Tourmaline earned the nickname 'Ceylonese Magnet' by attracting and then repelling hot ash, thanks to which property?

Pyroelectricity, a charge that appears as the crystal warms or cools, is what pulled the ashes in. Dutch traders had shipped the stones from Ceylon as curiosities, hence the nickname; squeezing a crystal produces a charge too.

Which lilac variety of spodumene, identified in 1902, honours Tiffany & Co.'s celebrated gemologist of the day?

Kunzite gets its purple from traces of manganese and, like its green sibling hiddenite, shows strong pleochroism, changing shade with the viewing angle. The mineral they belong to is a major ore of lithium.

Adularescence, a floating sheen named after Switzerland's Adula Alps, is the hallmark of which gem?

Moonstone glows because light scatters between thin alternating layers of two minerals, orthoclase and albite. The effect is named after adularia, a form of orthoclase first described from the Adula Alps.

Which natural gem, a December birthstone often confused with a lab-made diamond substitute, splits light so that its back facets look doubled?

Zircon's doubling is what lets a jeweller tell it from diamond and from the man-made cubic zirconia, neither of which shows it. Zircon grains from Australia, at 4.4 billion years, are the oldest minerals found on Earth.

Which diamond colour is widely reckoned the rarest and costliest, with the 5.11-carat Moussaieff the largest known?

Red diamonds are rarer even than pinks and blues, and most known stones weigh under half a carat. The leading theory is that the colour comes not from an impurity but from strain that deformed the crystal lattice.

Gem dealers use which French word for the mossy-looking tangle of inclusions and fissures inside a typical emerald?

Jardin means garden, and because stones free of surface-reaching fissures are so rare, almost all emeralds are 'oiled' to fill the cracks and improve their apparent clarity.

Which oil, its refractive index close to the stone's, is the traditional filler for surface cracks in most emeralds?

Cedar oil is pressed into surface-reaching fissures after cutting to improve clarity and stability, a treatment so routine that untreated emeralds are extremely rare. Some graders ignore oil traces that do not improve the look of the stone.

Cutters can split a rough diamond with a single tap of a steel blade in a groove, exploiting which property?

Cleavage planes decide where rough can be split cleanly. When Joseph Asscher cleaved the largest rough diamond ever found, in 1908, his steel blade broke on the first strike; a later blow split the stone in two.

Jadarite, a mineral found in Serbia in 2004, made headlines when its formula nearly matched which fictional substance?

Kryptonite's formula was invented for the 2006 film Superman Returns; the real mineral contains no fluorine and has no green glow.

BPM 37093, a white dwarf thought to have a crystallised carbon core, was nicknamed Lucy after a song by which band?

The Beatles' hit Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds supplied the nickname, because a diamond is crystallised carbon too. One 2004 estimate had about 90% of the star's mass crystallised.

Which actress was given La Peregrina, a pearl once owned by Spanish monarchs, as a Valentine's gift in 1969?

Elizabeth Taylor got it after Richard Burton paid $37,000 at Sotheby's, and she later wrote of losing the pearl in a hotel suite and fearing her puppy was chewing it.

Which French queen's name was blackened by a 1785 swindle over a diamond necklace she had never ordered?

Marie Antoinette had turned the necklace down; a con artist forged her signature, and Cardinal de Rohan, thinking he was pleasing the queen, agreed to buy it in instalments on her behalf.

Thomas Blood, dressed as a parson, tried to steal the English Crown Jewels in 1671 from which stronghold?

Blood was caught before he reached the Tower of London's Iron Gate, yet Charles II pardoned him and gave him land in Ireland worth £500 a year.

Which jeweller gave the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian in 1958, posting it by ordinary registered mail?

Harry Winston paid $145.29 to send it in a box wrapped in brown paper: $2.44 for the postage and the rest to insure it for $1 million.

Which gem is the 170-carat 'Black Prince's' stone, misnamed for centuries, that Henry V reputedly wore at Agincourt?

Spinel is what the famous stone turned out to be; legend has Peter of Castile handing it to Edward the Black Prince in 1367.

Which brassy mineral forms the golden flecks in lapis lazuli and is nicknamed 'fool's gold'?

Pyrite takes its name from the Greek for fire, since it throws sparks when struck, and it is sometimes found alongside small amounts of the real metal.

Which mineral, the main ingredient of soapstone carvings, sits at the very bottom of the ten-step Mohs scale?

Talc defines 1 on the scale as the softest mineral, and as a powder, often mixed with corn starch, it is the classic baby powder.

Visitors to Crater of Diamonds State Park may keep whatever gems they dig up in which US state?

Arkansas's park also gave up the Uncle Sam in 1924, which at over 40 carats is the largest diamond ever found in the United States.

Which 3,106-carat stone, found in South Africa in 1905, is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered?

The Cullinan reached Britain in a plain box by registered post, while detectives guarded a decoy parcel locked in a steamship captain's safe.

Which diamond, its name Persian for 'Mountain of Light', was ceded to Queen Victoria in 1849 by the Treaty of Lahore?

The Koh-i-Noor has been worn only by female royals since it reached Britain, and Punch magazine mocked the dull-looking stone as the 'Mountain of Darkness'.

Which jeweller's workshop made 50 jewelled Easter eggs for the last two Russian tsars, starting in 1885?

Fabergé delivered ten eggs for Alexander III and forty for Nicholas II, who gave them to his wife and to his mother at Easter; a handful have never been traced since the revolution.

Which mining giant's decades-long marketing campaign made the diamond the expected stone for an engagement ring?

De Beers began the campaign in the late 1930s; diamonds had appeared on betrothal rings since the Renaissance, but only afterwards did they become the default.

The 2006 film Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a smuggler, is set during which country's civil war?

Sierra Leone's war is the backdrop, and the film earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for DiCaprio and Best Supporting Actor for Djimon Hounsou.

About 90% of the world's extractable amber lies in Russia's Kaliningrad region, on the coast of which sea?

Baltic Sea amber, also called succinite, is tree resin that hardened during the Eocene epoch, between 56 and 34 million years ago.

Which blue-green stone, long mined near Nishapur in Iran, is among the gems inlaid in Tutankhamun's gold mask?

Turquoise comes from the Old French for 'Turkish', a misnomer: the stone reached Europe by way of Turkish lands, but its classic mines lay in Persia.

The carat, the 200-milligram unit used to weigh gems, takes its name from the seed of which tree?

Carob seeds lent the unit their Greek name, keration, long before the weight was fixed at 200 milligrams by an international conference in 1907.

Which firm, founded in 1895 in the Tyrolean town of Wattens, built its name on precision-cut glass 'crystals'?

Swarovski picked Wattens for its water power, which drove the crystal-cutting machine that founder Daniel had patented in 1892.

Which black stone did the Aztecs chip into blades for wooden swords, giving an edge sharper than a steel razor?

Obsidian is volcanic glass, formed when lava cools too fast for crystals to grow, and it has even been tried as a blade for surgical scalpels.

Which US state is nicknamed the 'Gem State', after a claim that its name meant 'gem of the mountains'?

Idaho was first floated as a name for what became Colorado Territory; lobbyist George Willing later claimed he had coined the supposedly Shoshone word himself.

Which plain-looking rounded rock, hollow inside and lined with crystals, is the official state rock of Iowa?

Geode hollows can begin as gas bubbles in cooling lava; mineral-rich water then seeps in and slowly grows the crystal lining.

Which scheme, set up in 2003 and named after a South African mining town, certifies rough diamonds as conflict-free?

The Kimberley Process grew out of a meeting of diamond-producing and trading states held in the town in May 2000, and it was backed by a United Nations resolution.

The mineral halite, which forms cube-shaped crystals where ancient seas dried up, is better known by which name?

Rock salt beds left behind by evaporated seawater can be hundreds of metres thick, and the mineral is spread on icy roads as well as on dinner.

Which naturally magnetic rock, a form of magnetite, was hung so it could turn to make the first compasses?

Lodestone takes its name from lode, an old word for a way or course, and the leading theory is that it is magnetised by the magnetic field around a lightning bolt.

Which Belgian city's diamond district was hit in 2003 by a vault raid dubbed the 'heist of the century'?

Antwerp's thieves emptied a vault of loose diamonds, gold, silver and jewellery valued at more than $100 million over a single February weekend.

The custom of birthstones is often traced to the twelve gems on the breastplate of which biblical high priest?

Aaron's breastplate carried a stone for each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and the first-century historian Josephus linked them to the twelve months of the year.

Most natural diamonds formed over a billion years ago, at least 150 kilometres down, in which layer of the Earth?

The mantle held them until volcanic eruptions carried them to the surface far more recently, hundreds to tens of millions of years ago.

Which banded green mineral gives its name to a Winter Palace room whose columns and fireplace are faced with it?

The Malachite Room was the seat of Russia's Provisional Government in 1917, and its ministers were arrested in the dining room next door when the palace was stormed.

Which Mughal emperor commissioned the gem-covered Peacock Throne, carried off from Delhi by Persian invaders in 1739?

Shah Jahan's goldsmiths took seven years to finish the throne, which was named for the jewelled peacocks on its canopy.

Traces of which metal, better known for plating car bumpers, give emerald its green colour?

Chromium, or sometimes vanadium, does the colouring; pure beryl, the mineral underneath, is colourless.

Which mineral group, a raw material for glass and ceramics, makes up about 60% of the Earth's crust?

Feldspar is everywhere underfoot, yet a few of its varieties are gems: moonstone and the iridescent labradorite both belong to the group.

The 11-metre crystals in Mexico's Naica cave are made of which mineral, the main ingredient of plaster and drywall?

Gypsum, in its clear form selenite, built some of the largest natural crystals ever found there, in air that reaches 58 °C with up to 99% humidity.

Which scarlet mineral, the most common ore of mercury, was ground up to make the artists' pigment vermilion?

Cinnabar is roasted in furnaces to release liquid quicksilver, and the dangers of handling it were recognised as early as ancient Rome.

Which phosphate mineral, the standard for 5 on the Mohs scale, forms a major part of human teeth and bones?

Apatite takes its name from the Greek for deceit, because it was so often mistaken for other minerals.

Which gemmological term names the narrow band of light that glides across a polished tiger's-eye stone?

Chatoyancy comes from the French for 'cat's eye', and the band appears when light bounces off parallel fibres or needle-like inclusions inside the stone.

Which American company's research lab made the first commercially successful synthetic diamonds in December 1954?

General Electric rewarded Tracy Hall, the chemist who achieved the breakthrough, with a $10 savings bond; he left the company the following year.

Which French chemist focused sunlight on a diamond in 1772 and showed that it burned away to carbon dioxide?

Antoine Lavoisier's burning-lens experiment proved that diamond is made of carbon, and in 1797 the English chemist Smithson Tennant repeated and expanded it.

Which Yorkshire port, a setting of Bram Stoker's Dracula, was famous in the 19th century for its jet jewellery?

Whitby had the black stone on its doorstep, in the local cliffs and moors, where people have gathered it to make beads since the Bronze Age.

Benitoite, a blue gem that glows under ultraviolet light, has been the official gemstone of which US state since 1985?

California prospector James Couch found it in 1907 and took it for sapphire, until a Berkeley mineralogist realised it was a mineral unknown to science.

Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave the first well-documented diamond engagement ring in 1477 to which duchess?

Mary of Burgundy needed the match as much as the ring: marrying into the Habsburgs won her support against the French king's designs on her lands.

Which ruined citadel on the edge of Hyderabad became a European byword for vast wealth through its diamond trade?

Golconda grew rich trading large stones from nearby mines such as Kollur, and its fort once had a vault where the most famous of them were stored.

The 1998 sapphire rush at Ilakaka turned a village of about 40 people into a boomtown on which island?

Madagascar's Ilakaka valley holds one of the largest known alluvial sapphire deposits on Earth, and the town had grown to nearly 60,000 people by 2005.

Which very coarse-grained igneous rock holds many of the world's largest crystals, including giant beryl and tourmaline?

Pegmatite crystals usually exceed a centimetre and sometimes a metre across, and giant mica and spodumene turn up in it as well.

Blue John, a banded purple-blue stone mined at Castleton in Derbyshire, is a rare form of which mineral?

Fluorite in this banded form was mined for its ornamental value in the 19th century; the usual explanation of the name is the French bleu-jaune, 'blue-yellow'.

Ammolite, an iridescent gem made of fossil ammonite shell, became which Canadian province's official gemstone in 2022?

Alberta sits on the Bearpaw Formation, the only rock unit where significant gem-quality deposits have been found; commercial mining began in 1981.

Larimar, a rare sea-blue variety of the mineral pectolite, is found only in which Caribbean country?

Miguel Méndez, who rediscovered the stone in the Dominican Republic in 1974, named it by joining his daughter's name, Larissa, to mar, the Spanish for sea.

Which southern African country is home to Orapa, the world's largest diamond mine by area, and to rich Jwaneng?

Botswana's Orapa was discovered in 1967, the year after the country's independence, while Jwaneng, further south, is nicknamed 'the Prince of Mines'.

The Orlov diamond, now in the Kremlin's Diamond Fund, was set in 1774 into the sceptre of which Russian empress?

The stone is named after Count Grigory Orlov, the lover of Catherine the Great for many years, who had led the coup that put her on the throne.

Which mineral did the famous 'twenty-mule teams' haul out of Death Valley in giant wagons in the 1880s?

Borax wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draft animals, and each 'twenty-mule team' was really eighteen mules and two horses.