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Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

Jill Wells – Diamond Doris

Doris Marie Payne is a 90 year old American jewel thief with a career that spans 6 decades.

She was born in Slab Fork, West Virginia on 10th October 1930, the daughter of a coal miner and the youngest of six children. Growing during the Depression in the segregated coal town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, Doris Payne was told her dreams were unattainable for poor black girls like her. Surrounded by people who sought to limit her potential, she vowed to turn the tables after the owner of a jewellery store threw her out when a white customer arrived. Her first thefts were performed to help her mother, who was Native American and was abused by her father, who was African American. She said she sold the items to allow her mother leave her unhappy marriage.

Her talents grew with each heist. Becoming an expert world-class jewel thief, she daringly pulled off numerous diamond robberies and her Jewish boyfriend fenced the stolen gems to Hollywood celebrities.

Doris's criminal exploits went unsolved well into the - partly because the stores did not want to admit that they were duped by a black woman.

One of her most celebrated thefts took place in the 1970s when she stole a 10-carat diamond ring valued at more than $500,000 from the Cartier store in Monte Carlo. She was inspired by the 1955 Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief. She fled to France, but was later extradited back to Monte Carlo, where she was held for nine months before being released, as the authorities were unable to locate the stolen gem.

When she was 80, she was arrested in California for removing the tags from a $1,300 Burberry trench coat and leaving the store with it. Three years later, she was arrested on felony larceny charges for stealing a $22,500 diamond-encrusted ring in California. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison, followed by two years on parole, and was ordered to stay away from jewellery stores. She was released three months later, however, due to prison overcrowding.

The next year she was stealing again and was believed to have stolen a $33,000 ring and was also caught on security cameras putting $690 Christian Dior earrings in her pocket. She was arrested and charged with shoplifting by Police.

On July 17, 2017 she was arrested for stealing $86.22 worth of merchandise from an Atlanta Wal- Mart, while wearing the ankle bracelet from her previous arrest. The judge said “Don’t come back, Ms Payne,” and she responded: “I won’t.”

Today, at eighty-seven, Doris, as bold and vibrant as ever, lives in Atlanta, and is celebrated for her glamorous legacy. She sums up her adventurous career best: "It beat being a teacher or a maid." Payne has openly spoken about her crimes and has used at least 20 aliases, ten social security numbers and nine dates of birth.

Her life has been recorded in a documentary entitled The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, in which she says “I don’t have any regrets about stealing jewellery. I regret getting caught. She has also co- Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group written a book with Zelda Lockhart, Diamond Doris is the portrait of a captivating anti-hero who refused to be defined by the prejudices and attitudes of a hypocritical society.

Memorial Diamonds - Ulla Mallick

In my Googling I came across Memorial Diamonds of which I had never heard before. Carbon is the element of all life. Natural diamonds consist of 99.9% carbon and are created under vast pressure and enormous heat over a long period in the earth. A Memorial Diamond, or a Cremation Diamond, is created by turning cremation ashes and/or hair into a diamond by simulating the natural diamond making process with special HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) machines. The human body consists of around 20% carbon. The cremated remains of an average adult weigh 2 to 3kg and at least 500g of ashes are needed in order to isolate enough carbon for at least one large diamond. Hair consists of around 51% carbon and at 5g of hair is needed for one diamond. In the process the carbon must first be isolated. This can take many weeks and results in a powdery carbon graphite substance which is then refined and filtered during another lengthy process until 99.9% carbon is achieved. The exact conditions that exist deep beneath the earth’s surface are then reproduced by specialised machinery and gradually, a diamond begins to grow. When the new diamong has reached the desired size, it is cleaned, cut and polished. Each cremation diamond is naturally grown and truly unique. The final shape, size and colour depend on its origin. The process gives only a range of colour and carat. Exact dimensions can neither be controlled nor predicted. The most basic diamond colour produced by this method is amber, followed by green, red, blue and colourless. A 1 carat amber diamond by one company would cost around $6500 and a 1 carat pure colourless diamond would be in the region of $11500 and might take up to 9 months to produce.

Neil Diamond – Jackie Putt

I planned to start with what prompted him to take the stage name Neil Diamond assuming he wanted to be a glittering star. However, actually Neil Diamond was the name he was born with and, surprisingly, he nearly changed his name to Noah Kaminsky!

Neil Leslie Diamond was born January 24, 1941, , New York. An American singer-songwriter he began his career writing pop songs for other musicians and then launched a solo recording career that spanned more than five decades.

Here are a few facts that to give you a snapshot of his life.

He went to school with Barbara Streisand but did not know her back then. 20 years later they recorded "You Don't Send Me Flowers Anymore" together.

When he was 16, he saw the folk singer perform at a Jewish kids camp in upstate New York. Watching Seeger inspired him to started taking guitar lessons and write songs.

He won a fencing scholarship to go to 's medical school and attended the pre- med program to become a doctor, but after a year dropped out to pursue a music publishing opportunity, he "couldn't refuse"— writing songs for $50 a week. Many years later in 1995 the Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group university awarded him an honorary degree. He continued to enjoy fencing and never stopped honing his swordsmanship skills, often warming up with fencing exercises before concerts.

Diamond wed Katie McNeil, 29 years his junior, in a small Los Angeles ceremony in 2012. She is now his manager. This was his third marriage. He has two daughters from his first marriage to his high- school sweetheart, teacher Jaye Posner, and two sons from his second marriage to production assistant Marcia Murphey.

On stage he was known for his sparkly often sequinned shirts as shown. His 6 most popular songs known to most of you are

• “I'm a Believer” ... song made famous by The Monkeys • “Solitary Man” ... • “” ... • “I Am, I Said” ... • “You Don't Bring Me Flowers” ... • “America”

He appeared in a few films but was not comfortable acting. For his role in (1980), Diamond became the first ever "Winner" of a Worst Actor Golden Raspberry Award.

He has had an illustrious and wide-ranging musical career, and was Inducted into the American (1984), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He was awarded a Star on the in 2012.

Diamond had retired from touring two years ago after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease but last year released a Covid version of Sweet Caroline - changing the chorus

Hands touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you became ... Hands washing hands, reaching out don't touch me I won't touch you !

Can see the full version on YouTube.

You may have seen 's Covid adapted version of Joline to 'Covid'

Neil Diamond is an exceptionally talented singer song writer who has sold over 130 million albums worldwide and has dominated the charts for more than five decades with 37 Top 40 singles and 16 Top 10 albums. He has achieved record sales with 40 Gold albums, 21 Platinum albums and 11 multi-platinum albums and has a net worth in 2020 is almost £150 million.

Kohinoor Diamond - Diane Foster

I decided to do some research about the Kohinoor Diamond as my husband was in the jewelry business and had always been fascinated by the history of the precious stone. This diamond is thought to have been mined in the 1300’s in India. Originally weighing an incredible793 carats before cutting, when in the hands of the Katatiya Dynasty, the diamond weighed 186 carats. There are many legendary theories about this diamond, and it is believed that it has passed through many influential hands over the centuries, the first mention is found in theMogul Empire founder Barbur. He recorded the gem amongst the treasures of Aladdin stating it was won during a battle in Malawah in 1304. The Kohinoor passed through many owners as the result of bloody battles and was finally obtained by the King of Afghanistan Ahmed Shah. Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

In 1830 Shah went to Lahore to win back the throne after being deposed , the Marharaja wanted the Kohinoor as part of the deal, and after some altercation Shah finally gave up the diamond. The Kohinoor was given to the British crown voluntarily as a gift and can be seen at the front of the crown. There has been some controversy saying the British stole the diamond , but that has been disputed as an Indian Official stated it was given as a gift. In 2016 the Indian Government stated that the Kohinoor diamond is a valued piece of art with strong roots in Indian history and the prime minister would like it back amicably. The case is still going on.

Fake diamonds - Monica Peel

A diamond can be a girl’s best friend and also her enemy. If the stone turns out to be fake and you have no idea here are some points to help: 1. Get a Certificate of Authenticity. A grading GIA IGI or AGS from an independent appraiser who is affiliated with a professional organisation. 2. How to tell if a mounted diamond is real. Eyes alone are not enough. Some diamonds can even fool experts. If it is mounted you should not be able to see through the bottom of it. If you put a mounted ring face down on a newspaper you should not be able to see the writing. 3. Can you ever see through a diamond? Rarely. Have it checked if you think you can see thought it. 4. A diamond’s reflection is shades of grey. If you can see rainbow colours it is probably a fake. 5. Diamonds show up on an x-. If you have it x-rayed and the stone does not appear it is a fake. 6. Do real diamonds sparkle? A real diamond appears grey and white inside when held up to the light but can reflect rainbow colours on to other surfaces. A fake diamond reflects rainbow colours when held up to the light. 7. It is so difficult to know what a real diamond looks like, so always go to a reputable source when purchasing one. 8. Test you can do at home. Fill a drinking glass with water and drop the lose stone into the glass. If it sinks it is real. If it rises to the top it is a fake. 9. Scratch a diamond against a mirror it will make a mark. If it does not make a mark it is a fake. 10. Hold a diamond up to the sunlight. If it shows rainbow colours it is a fake. 11. Don’t do this but diamonds do not melt near heat but fake diamonds will. 12. Sandpaper will harm a fake stone but a not a real diamond. 13. Always go to a jeweller you can trust. 14. If a ring has a mark CZ it is a fake. 15. A real diamond ring will have 585, 750, 900, or 930 PT or Plat 16. Let’s hope we all have the real thing!

Lucy in the sky with diamonds - Carol Thompson

Lucy in the sky with diamonds is from the album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which was released on the 1 June 1967 and recorded on the 1 March 1967.

Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green Towering over your head Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes And she's gone

Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Ah….

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers That grow so incredibly high

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore Waiting to take you away Climb in the back with your head in the clouds And you're gone

Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Ah....

Picture yourself on a train in a station With plasticine porters with looking glass ties Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Ah…..

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known as acid, is an hallucinogenic drug. Effects typically include altered thoughts, feelings and awareness of one's surroundings. Many users have visual or auditory hallucinations.

When released their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the late spring of 1967, fans and critics were quick to find references to drugs. The album’s deliriously decorated jacket featured marijuana plants in the garden. The lyrics often referred to marijuana, getting “high” and taking “some tea.” Listeners connected the feelings, sensations, and visions people typically experience while on hallucinogenic drugs to the dreamlike imagery of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Some pointed out that the song’s title shares the initials of the hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). Although none of the Beatles publicly admitted to taking LSD until two weeks after Sergeant Pepper public opinion was that a song incorporating acid trip imagery, released on an album featuring psychedelic designs, at a time when LSD was very much in the news, couldn’t have been given a title like that by accident. The Beatles had contributed to the perception that Sgt. Pepper was a piece of hippie propaganda for hallucinogenic partying as around the time the album was released, Paul McCartney revealed in an interview that he had been using marijuana and LSD. McCartney even went on to extol the virtues of LSD, claiming that it had brought him closer to God and would yield world peace if only politicians would try it. Soon after, , , and the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein also admitted that they had used LSD. Later that summer, the Beatles endorsed the legalisation of marijuana by signing their names to a full-page advertisement in the London Times. McCartney confirmed it was "pretty obvious" drugs did influence some of the group's compositions at that time, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" The BBC banned "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in 1967 amid concerns that it promoted drug use: Sgt Pepper was obviously influenced by drugs. The BBC arbitrarily banned both Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and the album's epic closing track for promoting LSD. Despite admitting to drug use, John Lennon denied that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about drugs. Lennon later said he was surprised at the idea the title was a hidden reference to LSD, the song "wasn't about that at all", and it "was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until someone pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? ... It's not an acid song." In 1971 he said “after that I went to see what the other songs spelt out. They didn't spell anything out. It wasn't about LSD. But nobody believes me.” McCartney said though John was certainly ingesting inordinate amounts of acid around the time he wrote “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the pun was sheer coincidence. Like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” people came up and said, “Right, I get it. L-S-D,” and it was when all the papers were talking about LSD, but we never thought about it. When we were talking about ‘cellophane flowers’ and ‘kaleidoscope eyes’ and ‘grow so incredibly high,' we were talking about drug experiences, no doubt about it. George Martin said the idea that 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' stands for LSD is rubbish. John liked to shock people, and if he'd really wanted to write about drugs he would have done it straight out. You'd never have been in any doubt as to what he was singing about. Lennon was very forthright about the role drugs Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

played in his song writing. It seems out of character that Lennon would lie about the true origins of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Instead, Lennon consistently claimed that the song was a response to a picture painted by his almost four-year-old son Julian. The story goes that Julian had brought the picture home from school and told his father that it was of his friend, Lucy O'Donnell who was up in the sky with diamonds. Lennon’s mind had then wandered toward the Lewis Carroll books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass that he had recently been re-reading. Lennon took images from Julian’s picture and combined them with elements of Lewis Carroll’s stories and poems, the title of Julian's drawing reminded him of the "Which Dreamed It?" chapter of Through the Looking Glass,” in which Alice floats in a "boat beneath a sunny sky. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualising that” he said. Julian’s school friend Lucy O’Donnell said in a 2007 BBC radio documentary, “I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel, throwing paint at each other. Julian had painted a picture and on that particular day his father picked him up from school.” Needless to say, this explanation was not widely accepted. People weren’t about to be taken in by the Beatles’ explanation that the title had been dreamed up by four-year-old Julian Lennon. The five-by-seven-inch piece of paper had a marked effect on all who saw it back in 1967. Paul McCartney recalled in 1992 Lennon said to him, ‘Look at this great drawing Julian’s just done, Look at the title!’ “And I remember it very well. It was a kid’s drawing and kids always have people floating around like [painter Marc] Chagall does in all his things. I think it’s something to do with kids not realising that people have to be put on the ground and right across the top there was written, in very neat child handwriting, I think in pencil, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” He and Lennon began swapping surreal suggestions for lyrics. Lennon provided this explanation at the time the song was released; he maintained the same explanation for the rest of his life and his explanation is corroborated by others such as Lennon’s boyhood friend Pete Shotton, “I happened to be there the day Julian came home from school with a pastel drawing of his classmate Lucy’s face against a backdrop of exploding, multi-coloured stars.” witnessed the moment and said I was actually with John when Julian came in with this a crazy little painting.’ Lennon later said, "I thought that's beautiful. I immediately wrote a song about it.” Lennon’s wife Cynthia also related a similar story “I remember him coming home from school with it and showing it to his dad, who was sitting down. At the time he didn’t say, ‘Oh, my God! What a great title for a song,’ but it obviously stuck.” One critic said in 1976, “The man has always been open and honest. He admitted to using drugs, he admitted to taking over a hundred LSD trips, why on earth would he bother to deny one little story about the origins of a song unless it wasn’t true?” In September 1980, only a few months before his death, John was still offering the same story of the title’s origin. Paul McCartney remembered the song's composition, "We did the whole thing like an Alice in Wonderland idea, being in a boat on the river ... Every so often it broke off and you saw Lucy in the sky with diamonds all over the sky. This Lucy was God, the Big Figure, the White Rabbit.” He later recalled helping Lennon finish the song, claiming he contributed the "newspaper taxis" and "cellophane flowers" lyrics. A third explanation for the song’s meaning and origin was provided by Lennon just a few weeks before he was killed in 1980 Lennon said: “There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me—a “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn’t met Yoko yet. . . . The imagery was Alice in the boat and also the image of this female who would come and save me—this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, but she was my imaginary girl that we all have.” So maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.' Another interpretation was from Music critic Ian MacDonald: “The “girl with kaleidoscope eyes” . . . was, for Lennon, the Research related to Diamonds – Ruislip NWR Group

lover/mother of his most helpless fantasies: “the image of the female who would someday come save me.” This mysterious, oracular woman was originally his mother, Julia, a role subsequently assumed by .” So we’ve had four explanations for the origin and meaning of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: (1) It is about the drug LSD (2) it is a lyrical response to Julian’s drawing, coloured by the writings of Lewis Carroll (3) it is about a female saviour who turned out to be Yoko Ono and (4) it is about Lennon’s mother, Julia. Is only one of these explanations true? Are none of them true? Are they all true?

Jean Gillen – Blood diamonds

The diamond industry is largely unregulated, and slave labour and child labour have been rife since the search and sale of diamonds began in India, South Africa and elsewhere. The term 'Blood Diamonds' is often used in relation to this abuse. Workers would be paid for the quality of the diamond found, but would seldom be rewarded fairly for their labours. Children would be given tedious and repetitive tasks that paid next to nothing. All this in appalling working conditions. The children could not attend school. and their health was seriously threatened by their working conditions.

International charities have been set up, but not widely acknowledged, until around 2003 when two models who had been working for De Beers became aware of the issues, especially concerning children. They decided to end their commitment to De Beers publicly, and became involved with Diamonds for Peace, one of the developing charities tackling this issue.

Also in that year, the rap-singer Kanye West worked a development of 's song, Diamonds are Forever. He included extra verses, recounting and raising public awareness of the horrors of the industry.