Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself Emperor of France, famously divorced his Josephine because she couldn't have children, and married Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. The second marriage was a success - Marie-Louise gave birth to a son within a year. Napoleon was so thrilled that he ordered the fabulous Napoleon Diamond Necklace from French jewellers Nitot et Fils.
It cost a staggering 376,274 francs in 1811. The necklace was inherited by Marie-Louise's Austrian Hapsburg relatives, and it stayed in that family till 1950 when it was sold to a French industrialist, who sold it in 1960 to an American Majorie Merriweather Post, the owner of General Foods which later merged with Kraft Foods.
In 1962, Majorie Post donated the necklace to the Smithsonian Museum, where it has remained ever since.
