At 14 pounds, the pearl is so massive it does not even have a single owner — although it almost did, if some reports are to be believed. Allegedly, Osama bin Laden himself offered to buy the Pearl of Lao Tzu, which he called “The Pearl of Allah” as a gift to Saddam Hussein “to unite the Arab cultures.” The story my be apocryphal, but nevertheless representative of the kind of stories that swirl around the already amazing pearl.

On this day, May 7, after a diver from the Philippines was said to have drowned after being caught by a giant clam, a group of divers searching in the vicinity found a giant tridacna clam, retrieving from it a massive pearl that could barely be held in two hands. The tribal chief named it “The Pearl of Allah” its supposed resemblance to the Prophet Muhammad.

Legend traces the pearl even further, to the time Lao Tzu, who had a jade amulet carved the pearl would go into, but in defiance of his orders, the pearl was transferred to ever-larger clams for growth. Modern history picks up in 1969, when archaeologist Wilburn Cobb acquired it as a gift for saving the chief’s child from malaria. Cobb’s estate sold it for $200,000 to Peter Hoffman and Victor Barbish. Babish then took out a loan from Colorado Springs bar owner Joseph Bonicelli, offering him part of the pearl as collateral. From there, the pearl became part of a murder-for-hire scheme, allegedly carried out by Bonicelli, and a lawsuit by his children. A fantastic story, even if probably not true.