Did you know?
For a few years, San Diego County mined pink stones mostly for one customer on the other side of the world. Between 1902 and 1910 the mines shipped some 120 tons of gem rubellite to imperial China to feed the Empress Dowager Cixi's love of the color, and when she died and the Qing dynasty fell soon after, the market collapsed and the California boom went with it.
Pressing a quartz crystal makes it give off a precise electric beat, which is why it keeps time in nearly every watch and once tuned the radios of World War II, when good crystals were a strategic resource.
