40 Fun Facts About Topaz

Portugal's Braganza stone, long famed as which far costlier gem, is said to be probably a topaz?

Diamond was the claim, but a colourless topaz cut as a brilliant can pass for one, and the two gems share almost the same density.

Which director made the 1969 spy thriller Topaz, about a French agent in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Alfred Hitchcock first ended the thriller with a duel in a French football stadium, but test audiences panned it and he shot a replacement ending.

The Topaz camp of World War II, named after a nearby mountain, held Americans of which ancestry?

Japanese Americans were held there from 1942 to 1945, and with some 9,000 internees and staff the camp became the fifth-largest city in its state.

The crimson topaz and fiery topaz, both found in the Amazon Basin, are large species of which bird?

Hummingbird males of the genus Topaza are by far the largest in their range, and only the giant hummingbird of the Andes is bigger.

The island of Topazios, usually credited with naming topaz, actually yielded which green gem?

Peridot was mined on the Red Sea island now called Zabargad, and before modern mineralogy the two stones were routinely confused.

Sir David Brewster, who found liquid-filled cavities in topaz, also invented which optical toy?

Kaleidoscope fame came to Brewster around 1815; the fluid he found sealed inside topaz is still called brewsterlinite.

Topaz Mountain crystals are amber-coloured when dug but turn clear after exposure to what?

Sunlight fades the amber tint to colourless, and the brown topaz of Siberia is known for bleaching in the same way.

Some scholars trace the name topaz back to an ancient Sanskrit word, 'tapas', meaning what?

Fire fits the gem's warm orange glow, though most authorities favour a Greek origin in the island name Topazios.

Which US state, where the gem is found in Mason County, made blue topaz its official state gem?

Texas adopted blue topaz in 1969 and also has an official state gemstone cut, the Lone Star Cut.

From the 1300s to the 1600s, Europeans thought a topaz could dispel anger and break what?

Magic spells were one worry; in the Middle Ages a topaz tied to the left arm was also believed to ward off the evil eye.

On the modern birthstone list, golden-orange topaz belongs to people born in which month?

November's stone is also a traditional symbol of friendship, and jewellers' lists pair it with a second golden gem.

Which cheaper golden gem shares topaz's birthstone month and was confused with it for centuries?

Citrine weighs noticeably less than a topaz of the same size, which is one way gem dealers tell the two apart.

Topaz Mountain, a Thomas Range summit where rockhounds may collect the gem, rises in which US state?

Utah made topaz its state gem in 1969, and the mountain sits on public land where collecting rocks and minerals is permitted.

Imperial topaz is said to honour the 1800s rulers of which country, who kept the finest stones?

Russia's Ural Mountains were then the leading source of topaz, and ownership of the prized gem was restricted to the royal family.

The ancient Greeks, according to gem lore, believed that topaz gave them which quality?

Strength was the Greek belief, while the ancient Romans trusted topaz to protect them from danger on their travels.

In India, a centuries-old belief holds that topaz brings long life when worn above which organ?

The heart is the spot, and the same belief promises beauty and intelligence along with the long life.

The trade name for yellowish-brown to orange topaz borrows the name of which wine?

Sherry topaz is also sold as precious topaz, a label that sets it apart from cheaper look-alike gems.

The American Golden Topaz, a 172-facet gem of over ten pounds, was given in 1988 to which museum?

The Smithsonian displays it in Washington; its cutter spent two years shaping it from a 26-pound stream-rounded cobble.

Topaz ranks 8 on the Mohs hardness scale, one step above which very common mineral at 7?

Quartz floats in heavy test liquids such as bromoform while topaz sinks, a trick used to tell the two apart.

Most blue topaz in shops began colourless, then was heated and given which other treatment?

Irradiation has fed a mass market since the 1970s, and oversupply dragged wholesale prices from $20 to $40 a carat down to a few dollars.

Topaz is a silicate mineral built from aluminium and which highly reactive halogen element?

Fluorine escapes when topaz is roasted for industrial use, a byproduct that raises health and environmental concerns.

A hard knock can split a topaz cleanly along one flat plane, a weakness mineralogists call what?

Cleavage in topaz is perfect in one direction, so despite its hardness the gem needs gentler handling than other very hard stones.

Which metal, replacing aluminium in the crystal, gives rare untreated topaz red and violet colours?

Chromium colours one of the most sought-after topaz hues: red stones make up less than half of one percent of the facet-grade material found.

The gem sold as Mystic Topaz is a colourless stone that owes its rainbow shimmer to what?

A thin artificial coating creates the rainbow effect, and it is delicate: abrasive cleaners or a buffing wheel will strip it off.

Which American novelist wrote Topaz, the 1967 spy bestseller set around the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Leon Uris drew loosely on a real espionage scandal inside French intelligence, and the book topped the New York Times list.

The Topaz, a compact car sold as the twin of the Ford Tempo, wore the badge of which brand?

Mercury sold the Topaz for the 1984 to 1994 model years, after which the Mystique took over from the four-door version.

TOPAZ was a lightweight nuclear reactor first flown on satellites in 1987 by which country?

The Soviet Union designed it for long space missions; the name is an acronym for a thermionic experiment, not a nod to the gem.

Colourless topaz pebbles were known in Brazil as 'pingos d'agoa', a Portuguese phrase meaning what?

Drops of water was the local nickname for clear pebbles that, once cut as brilliants, have been mistaken for far pricier gems.

In 1750 a Parisian jeweller found that gently heating yellow Brazilian topaz turns it which colour?

Pink stones made this way were sold as 'Brazilian ruby', and the treatment spread so widely that most rosy topaz in antique jewellery is heated.

The Ostro Stone, a 9,381-carat blue topaz, first went on public show at which British institution?

The Natural History Museum put it on show in 2016, three decades after the rough crystal was found in the Amazon rainforest.

In the King James Bible, topaz is one of twelve stones on which garment of the high priest?

Breastplate stones are a translator's puzzle: scholars think the Hebrew word meant another gem, since true topaz was unknown at the time of the Exodus.

A topaz crystal that is heated, rubbed or squeezed will develop which surprising physical property?

An electric charge builds up in each case; another oddity is that a strongly heated topaz loses a good deal of its weight.

Topaz, a home movie shot secretly in a wartime internment camp, joined which US archive in 1996?

The National Film Registry had chosen only one amateur film before it, the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination.

The American Golden Topaz and most imperial topaz come from which Brazilian state?

Minas Gerais has yielded fine topaz for more than two centuries, chiefly from mines around the colonial town of Ouro Preto.

A dark shade of treated blue topaz is sold under a trade name borrowed from which European capital?

London Blue gets its inky colour from neutron bombardment, while paler sky-blue stones are often made with electron beams.

Topaz can show different colours along different crystal directions, a property called what?

Pleochroism matters to dealers: many insist a stone must show a reddish pleochroic colour, often seen at its ends, before it is called imperial topaz.

Ghundao Hill, near the town of Katlang, is a source of violet-tinged rose topaz in which country?

Pakistan's Ghundao Hill has been mined since 1972, and the gem trade calls its most sought-after shade cyclamen.

At Topaz Mountain the gem crystals grew inside cavities of which silica-rich volcanic rock?

Rhyolite lava erupted there six to seven million years ago, and the crystals can be dug from the rock or picked up loose on the slopes.

The French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier described a large topaz worn by which Mughal emperor?

Aurangzeb's topaz was tiny beside modern giants: one cut stone from Brazil now on display weighs more than ten pounds.

Topaz is the name of a huge plant in California's San Luis Obispo County that generates what?

Solar power at Topaz comes from a 550-megawatt photovoltaic station that is owned by a Berkshire Hathaway company.