The legendary Koh-i-Nor diamond was lost for quite some time, after the handover from the Sikhs, to British rule, in 1849. It was only after repeated requests from Britain to Sir John Lawrence, Governor General of India, that the diamond was found again. Finally the gardener asked if they were looking for “The bit of glass in the old tin in the tool-shed?”

Sir Lawrence had been handed the fabled diamond as part of the spoils of war, without being aware of what he had been given. Perhaps it is just as well, as any male owner, or wearer of the diamond was said to possess the world, but also a world of the worst misfortune. Only a woman (or god) may wear or possess the diamond in safety.

The Koh-i-Nor diamond weighed around 793 carots when it was mined in India, some say 4000 years ago. The first cut took it to an undistinguished diamond weighing 186 carots. It was not until Queen Victoria ordered a further cut, that the brilliant 108.93 Koh-i-Nor we  know today, was revealed.

For 213 years the fabled stone was in the possession of Delhi Moguls. It was held by Tehran for 109 years and in Afghan’s possession for 66 years. All claim the stone back from Britain, who has held it for 160 years.
It is a diamond that has never been bought or sold, though it has changed hands many times and long been the eye of the storm. It has left a trial that involves war, greed, power, murder, mayhem, brutality and torture, not to mention deceit, double dealing and mountains of unhappiness. The curse-legend was so strong there was some talk of Queen Victoria returning the stone to India. Instead though, she placed it in a tiara, along with 2000 other diamonds.

In 1911 it was placed in the centre of a crown for Queen Mary to wear for the coronation ceremony.

Again in 1937 it was transferred to another coronation crown, for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The only other time the crown was taken from behind its high-security armoured glass in the Tower of London, was in 2002, when it was placed on the top of the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s coffin, as it proceeded from St James Palace to Westminster Abbey. There it remained on public view, as people filed past to pay their respects to the last Empress of India. One can only imagine the security that would have surrounded the crown jewel during this time.

Whether we believe in the curse of the Koh-i-Nor or not, it is doubtful that any man in the British realm, will have the courage to wear the fabled diamond.

Only now is there a possibility that the round Koh-i-Nor may be dwarfed by a new rough diamond found in a tiny nation of South Africa. A diamond that as yet remains unnamed and unvalued. A diamond that has the highest rated colour and clarity. Analysts, using high tech computers, estimate the diamond will cut into a modern round at about 150 carats.

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All is doom and gloom in the world of finance, yet things are vastly different to the days of the Great Depression in the 1930’s. On one hand we have Somali pirates holding shipping companies to ransom for millions of dollars, while a world away, million dollar rock stars are being recovered from the murky depths of the earth.

The world’s 20th largest rough diamond ever found, weighs in at a mere 478 carats. It was recently recovered from the Letseng Diamond mine, in the tiny South African kingdom of Lesotho.

This new gem is a baby compared to the Cullinan diamond that weighed in uncut, at 3,106 carats. From the Cullinan diamond the Great Star of Africa was cut, besides 104 other diamonds. The Great Star of Africa adorns King Edward’s scepter and can be viewed among the British Crown Jewels, in the Tower of London.

While the new found, still unnamed diamond, also remains unvalued, its sister stone,  the Letseng Promise sold for $12.4 million dollars. An early recovery from the same mine, the Letseng Legacy sold for $10.4 million.

Analysis at Antwerp revealed that new gem has the highest colour grade and because of its round shape has the potential of being cut to become the world’s largest round flawless diamond ever found. In a polished state it could be valued at tens of millions of dollars.

The potentially largest new round, flawless, diamond, weighing 150 carats, would dwarf the cursed, 103 carat Koh-i-Nor diamond, which is the centre piece of the Queen Mother, the Queen Elizabeth’s coronation crown. The Koh-i-Nor diamond is said to be a curse for anyone other than a woman.

“Preliminary examination of this remarkable now-found diamond indicates that it will yield a record breaking polished stone of the very best color and clarity,” says the CEO and  Chairman of Gem Diamonds.

From 1977 to 1982 the Letseng mine was operated by De Beers Mining Company. It is the highest diamond mine in the world, being 3,100 metres above sea level, though it only reaches to around 645 metres deep. Only reopened in 2004 in a joint venture between Gem Diamonds and the Lesotho government its yield is 90% of jewel quality. This makes the Letseng a unique mine.

Three of the world’s top diamonds have been recovered from the Letseng mine – the 601 carat Lesotho Brown in mid 1960, the 603 carat Lesotho Promise, August 2006 and the Letseng Legacy recovered in Sept 2007.

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If you book an ocean cruise that goes through the Suez Canal and the Gulf Aden, past the pirate-infested coastline of Somalia, you will find your ticket entails a lot of extra expenses.

Hapag-Lloy, the German Hamburg-based cruise operator, announced on Wednesday that its 246 passengers, from the MV Columbus, would now disembarked at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. The passengers would be flown by charter plane to Dubai, where they will spend three days in a five-star hotel, waiting for their 150-meter ship to arrive. Should the MV Columbus manage to survive running the gauntlet of the pirate-infested waters, the passengers will re-embark at the Omen port of Salalah. They will then continue their around-the-world tour, which commenced in Italy. In this way the company hopes to minimize the piracy risk to the passengers.

Abdul Haasan has led the Central Regional Coast Guard, formed only three years ago. This group has unleashed a storm of terror and fear on one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. They claim: “We are eco-warriors, or marines defending Somali waters from foreign exploitation.” Yet the Saudi Arabia, state-owned Sirius Star, the world’s largest oil tanker, was hijacked on November  18th 833 km off the Somali coast.

The remote decrepit Somali fishing outpost, Eyl, has become the piracy capital of the world. Secondary school kids education and head for Eyl, enticed by the alluring promise of making big dollars.

“Armed guards will now be posted on vulnerable cargo ships using the Gulf, in the first such deployment of military personnel, in the international fight against piracy,” says the European Union’s anti-piracy mission in a statement yesterday. Warships from Greece, Britain and France, plus two maritime surveillance aircraft from France and Spain will police the area. It is expected that a German war ship will join the anti-piracy mission mid December.

Merchant vessels owned by Indian shipping companies will place armed guards on vessels moving through the Gulf of Aden. “Once the ships are out of the danger zone, the armed guards will disembark. This will be a very expensive exercise,” stated Captain Anshul Rajvanshi of the Mumbai-based Ebony shipping company. “However, once the pirates have boarded a vessel, negotiation is the only safe way left open to us.”

Armed with information from relatives in custom offices, a typical ‘day-at-the-office’ for the 350 Somali pirates, with their mother ships and 100 small crafts, it is merely a matter of deciding which ship to attempt to hijack next. With the world in financial crises it seems the Somali pirates have created their own ‘pot of gold’.
40 ships have been hijacked, of the 90 attempted attacks this year. To view the full extent of world-wide piracy it is worth taking a few minutes to Google a live IBM Piracy Map.

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They say survival goes to the fittest, but it was survival of the fattest that saved a morbidly obese 12 year-old border collie-mix, weighing around 120 pounds.

Unfortunately Jiffy made the mistake of sitting his behind on the sidewalk in Wisconsin, USA, only to become firmly attached to the freezing surface.

Jiffy’s 59 year old owner said the dog refused to come inside. However, she says, she did check on the dog several times during the night.

As the temperatures continued to plummet, Jiffy sat alone, on the pavement outside his owner’s home. Carey Payne, a Sheboygan County Shelter manager said, “Few dogs could have survived the single-digit temperatures. Probably it was Jiffy’s layers of fat that saved the dog’s life, combined with the double coat of soft undercoat and top coarse hair.”

In the morning local Shelter workers had to pour warm water over Jiffy’s rear end, in order to unstick the dog from the pavement. “It is too soon to tell if the dog has any long term effects.”

On Thursday morning, Jiffy’s owner was arrested by the Sheboygan police, on grounds of animal neglect.
Border collies are widely accepted as the most intelligent of all dog breeds.  Normally highly energetic, they play hard and work hard. Most border collies are well behaved dogs, eager to please their human handler. They are reserved with strangers and very protective of human family members.

The actions of Jiffy’s owner leaves many questions unanswered. If she had gone close enough to Jiffy surely she would have seen that the dog was stuck on the pavement? What about the dog’s behavior when he was called but couldn’t come?  Neighbours must have heard the distressed dog barking?

Perhaps the obese size of Jiffy tells us all we need to know about the knowledge and ability of the owner. Let’s hope that Jiffy will get a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity and find a new and better home for the New Year and doesn’t get left in the cold again.

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“I wanted to see women shake their legs,” was the simple excuse behind 35 year-old Manabu Mizuta’s bizarre behavior.

Manabu was arrested after releasing hundreds of beetle larvae inside a moving express train in Japan. Local police had been on the lookout after 18 similar cases had been reported this month, by the same train operator.

At the time of the arrest, nearly 200 worms had been released from a clear container in Misuta’s possession. In his backpack he had 10 more containers. Someone estimated there to be around 3,600 worms in the containers, but then who’s counting?

The worms and Mitzuta were taken to a local police station.

At least the worms are a step up from releasing spiders in a crowded train, but the question remains, where did Manabu collect the worms from? What a pity Mizuta didn’t use his talents for a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity that could change lives for the better, instead of a mindless prank.

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In May 2002, Robert Ballard led a National Geographic expedition, that found the sunken remains of John F Kennedy’s PT-109. It has taken six years for the US Navy experts to declare that the wreck found in 360 metres of water is actually the boat JFK’s skippered.

American troops were based on various islands of the South Pacific, after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbour during World War11, including a base of Santo in Vanuatu, where 100,000 Americans arrived in May 1942. A second base was on Efate, Vanuatu, where 25,000 troops were stationed. The task of the American troops was to halt the Japanese advance down the South Pacific chain of tropical islands.

Nearly 60 years ago a Japanese destroyer appeared suddenly out of the dark around 2.00a.m. in the morning. It ploughed over the top of a PT-109, skippered by 26 year old JF Kennedy, millionaire heir, ambassador’s son and soon to be US president. The Japanese destroyer sliced through a PT-109, killing two crew members and leaving the rest clinging to the still-floating bow section.

Fearing that there would be no rescue for them, the sailors decided to make a several-hour swim to a nearby deserted island. Kennedy was suffering from a back injury, but managed to assist one of his crew by holding onto the sailor’s vest with his teeth.

Exhausted, thirsty and starving, the men were eventually rescued by some Solomon Islanders in dugout canoes. The Islanders were able to move around in the daytime, undetected by the Japanese. They had discovered a coconut carved with a rescue message from Kennedy and passed it onto a coastguard.

Kennedy and his crew were finally hauled aboard a sister ship, six days after their boat was destroyed. The coconut that saved the men’s lives sat on the Oval desk at the White House during Kennedy’s presidency, reminding everyone that in life there are Blue Moon Opportunities, if you have the courage to act on them. Opportunities that change lives.

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The more you drive on the roads the more you realize it is like playing Russian Roulette, simply because you do not know what anyone else will do. However, when the signs are confusing as well, what chance do you have?

This is a Blue Moon Opportunity for someone to begin collecting ‘crazy’ motor signs. Add them to the above collection. Let’s see who can come up with the craziest one of all.