A French tourist visiting the United States had a stroke of good fortune during a recent road trip, stumbling upon an extraordinarily rare 7.46-carat brown diamond at an Arkansas state park.Julien Navas, hailing from Paris, was travelling across the U.S. to see a rocket launch in Florida when he decided on a whim to stop at Crater of Diamonds State Park, after hearing of its reputation for harbouring valuable gemstones.The 37-acre park allows visitors to search its muddy fields and keep any diamonds they uncover. An inexperienced diamond hunter, Navas opted to scan the surface of soil softened by heavy rains rather than sift through dirt.Several hours later, a gumdrop-sized brown stone he collected turned out to be a 7.46-carat diamond, the largest found in the park since 2020 and eighth-biggest in its 50-year history.I was overjoyed! exclaimed Navas, who named the diamond Carine after his fiancée and plans to split it into two stones for her and their daughter.More than 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed in Crater of Diamonds since the first sparkling gems were found on the land in 1906. The largest diamond discovered in the U.S., a 40.23-carat monster, was also excavated at the site in 1924.Navas serendipitous detour turned his American road trip into a truly dazzling adventure. The French tourist went searching for stones and ended up finding a diamond in the rough.
