If you want to see what the world's most famous diamonds looked like as babies, you'll have to rewind history by about a billion years.
Take a look at the stunning, possibly cursed Hope Diamond — the spectacular, blue, 45-carat stone that has sat on permanent display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History since 1958 — and hit rewind. As the years spool backward, you'll see the brilliant blue diamond leave its museum pedestal and swiftly change hands, from merchants to socialites to thieves to King Louis XIV. Eventually, you'll see a French gem merchant return it to a mine in India, where it'll sit trapped in hardened lava for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
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