Mega Genius®, a registered trademark and service mark, is a pseudonym for Jim Diamond, a retired American magician of stage and television, also known as “the man with the perfect IQ™, born December 1, 1942.   He is an internationally recognized expert consultant on human intelligence and author of “The Mega Genius® Lectures,” an audio tool used worldwide for effectively increasing intelligence.

Jim Diamond has the highest documented overall level of intellectual performance possible on "The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale — Revised,” the most accurate and valid intelligence test for adults. 

Early Life

Jim Diamond was born in Ohio.  His mother was a singer and his father a professional Hawaiian steel guitarist and methods engineer.

At age five, Jimmie telephoned the police, summoning them to his upscale neighborhood adjoining a country club, to control a “riot” at his family’s residence.  Moments later, Jimmie explained to his surprised father and a police squad that his 10-year-old brother had been teasing him, and demanded that the police put the kibosh on that.  The police roared with laughter and the news media ran with the story.  Little Jimmie's solution worked!  His brother never teased him after that.

By age six, Jimmie had become intensely interested in magic (perhaps to make those who annoyed him disappear).  At age seven, he solved a brainteaser for adults, winning first prize in a local radio call-in contest.  Then he convinced the show’s sponsor, who was a magician, to award him used magical apparatus in place of the advertised prize.  Then he charged each child in the neighborhood 10 cents admission to see his backyard magic show.

By age 12, he was performing professionally for nationally prominent corporations, before audiences of thousands.

As a pre-teen, he befriended Dorothy Fuldheim, the “First Lady of Television News,” at WEWS-TV, in Cleveland, Ohio.  Ms. Fuldheim was the first woman in the United States to have her own television news analysis program and later became the first woman in the U.S. to anchor a television news broadcast.  Her interviewees included Albert Einstein, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, the Duke of Windsor, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barbara Walters, and President Ronald Reagan.

Four years later, when Jim was 16, he and Dorothy Fuldheim forged a pact.  She promised her continual support in exchange for his promise to significantly advance the evolution of humanity during his lifetime.

The following year, he performed for his high school’s annual talent show as both the master of ceremonies and as a standup comedian.

Jim bet the seniors in his high school’s physics classes that he could beat all of them in the school’s annual science fair, despite being merely a junior and never having taken a course in physics.  Accordingly, he constructed a six-foot tall (1.83 meters) Van de Graaff electrostatic generator that produced rapid bursts of 1,000,000-volt bolts of lightning, and then discovered a previously unexplained electrical phenomenon that he later demonstrated for scientists at Heidelberg College.

Jim won first prize in physics at the science fair, with a rating of “superior.”  For his innovation and discovery, he was inducted into the Ohio Academy of Science.

Soon thereafter, while enrolled at Ashland University, he accepted an offer from the United States Department of Defense for intensive training in advanced classified aviation electronics.

Professional magic

Throughout the 1960s, “The Amazing Mr. Diamond,” performed in theaters and nightclubs throughout the United States, and on television on all three major networks: NBC (KSL-TV), CBS (KUTV-TV) and ABC (KTVX-TV).

“Those were the early days of color television,” Diamond recalled, “beginning in 1966, when all three networks began airing full color, prime time schedules.  Those of us on camera had to wear a spectrum of theatrical cosmetics — Maui-tan pancake makeup, lapis lazuli colored contact lenses, and pepper-red lipstick — so as not to appear washed out and lifeless on television.  Studio makeup artists decorated us as if we were corpses, while NBC advertised that we were in ‘living color.’”

In the late 1960s, while living in Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California, Jim Diamond opened “The Diamond Palace,” a jewelry store specializing in diamonds, near Temple Square, in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The Amazing Mr. Diamond then distributed thousands of his business cards, each of which was embedded with a genuine diamond.

“Advertising has a short life expectancy," Diamond explained.  “But, Seymour Heller, Liberacé’s manager, suggested the solution to me.  And it worked!  No one ever tossed away one of my business cards and everyone remembered my name.”

Diamond’s career as a professional magician spanned 45 years, until his retirement from that field, in 1992.

“The Million-Dollar Miracle” … the world’s greatest illusion?

On October 23, 1976, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Houdini’s passing, Jim Diamond presented a “magical effect” that he called “an attempt to escape from the laws of the physical universe.”

He arranged through the offices of Joe Albritton, the owner of the Washington Star newspaper, for an official 12-member committee to photograph and fingerprint him that morning, on the balcony of the Los Angeles County Art Museum.  Moments later, at 11:00 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, in full view and surrounded by hundreds of spectators, in what the committee later described as “a singular, brilliant flash of light,” Diamond’s body appeared to dematerialize.

At the same instant, three time zones away, at 2:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, he reappeared near the White House grounds, 2300 miles (3700 Kilometers) distant, in Washington, D.C., surrounded by hundreds of spectators who had been awaiting his arrival.  He was then immediately photographed and fingerprinted again, by an official 12-member reception committee.

As verified by the Washington Star, the images in the photographs from both locations matched perfectly, as did both sets of fingerprints.

At the offices of the Washington Star, Diamond offered an immediate $5,000 cash award to anyone who could prove that either set of fingerprints, or either of the official photographs, was in any way fraudulent.  No one ever challenged their validity.

The Amazing Mr. Diamond explained later, “It was either the largest and most incredible illusion in the annals of modern magic, to this day, or it was the first and only reliably witnessed and fully documented transcontinental teleportation.  I will let you decide.”

He then issued a press release, challenging anyone to accept his offer to publicly repeat his transcontinental teleportation, anytime within the following year, for a $1,000,000 cash performance fee.

A year later, in October of 1977, after no one had accepted his offer, Diamond raised his performance fee to $10,000,000.

On June 22, 2001, 25 years after the Million-Dollar Miracle, Diamond unexpectedly revealed how he had done it.  “I did it,” he explained, “the same way anyone else would have done it.”

In 2003, Jim Diamond and James Randi, known as “The Amazing Randi,” a challenger of paranormal claims, sought to reach an agreement for Diamond to repeat the transcontinental teleportation.  However, there was no resultant meeting of the minds.  Regarding Diamond’s $10,000,000 performance fee, Randi wrote, “It’s just too steep for me.”

The Spirit of ‘76

In 1966, at age 23, Jim Diamond wandered into a dingy antique shop, past a sign that proclaimed, “Come in and see what Grandma threw away.”  In a dim corner, he spied a dusty 15-inch-tall pair of matching Bristol glass vases.  Each bore an illustrious painting of The Spirit of ’76 — two marching American Revolutionary War drummers and a fifer — by Archibald M. Willard.  The Spirit of ’76 was the most popular painting by an American artist.

Diamond suspected that Grandma should have kept her glasses on, and that the images were not reproductions, but lost national treasures, original versions of the most popular patriotic painting in the world.  He subsequently bought the vases.

The following year, Diamond discovered their secret.  A sole member of A. M. Willard's immediate family still survived.  Alden B. Hare, Executive Secretary of The A. M. Willard Museum Society, was an adopted son of the famous artist.  He had grown up in the artist’s home and knew that A. M. Willard had painted original versions of The Spirit of ‘76 on two fragile Bristol glass vases, in the 1870s, for his personal enjoyment.  After the artist’s death, in 1918, the objets d’art had been lost.  The elderly Alden B. Hare had had been searching for The Spirit of '76 Vases for most of his life.

Diamond journeyed 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) to meet the aged man.  On August 11, 1967, Alden B. Hare examined the two Bristol Glass paintings and executed an “affidavit of authenticity,” certifying that he was "… convinced they are the two vases which rested on the mantel of the east parlor of the house of Archibald M. Willard at 4933 Holyoke Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, approximately sixty (60) years ago [circa 1907] when I lived there."

Diamond had discovered, and preserved for posterity, two American treasures that symbolized the birth of The United States of America, which had been lost for more than a half-century.

In November of 1967, Mrs. Juanita Roberts, Personal Secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Miss Betty South, Assistant to Mrs. Hubert H. Humphrey, wife of the Vice President, began negotiations with Diamond to obtain The Spirit of '76 Vases for permanent display upon a marble mantel in the East Room of The White House, unquestionably the most famous room in America.  However, no agreement was reached.

On the morning of March 25, 1968, The Honorable Calvin Rampton, Governor of Utah, and Jim Diamond jointly displayed The Spirit of '76 Vases at "Gallery 268," a professional art showplace in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, as reported by ABC (KCPX-TV) news.

That afternoon, at Governor Rampton's request, he and Jim Diamond posed for a series of official photographs with The Spirit of '76 Vases in the Governor’s Office, in the Utah State Capitol Building.  Later that day, NBC’s KSL-TV studios showcased The Spirit of ’76 Vases and Diamond’s remarkable story of the loss, and his eventual discovery, of two of America’s most symbolic national treasures.

On April 11, 1970, The Spirit of '76 Vases were exhibited publicly for the last time, in Los Angeles, at the fine arts gallery of Celebrity Centre International, a sanctum for stars of stage, television and motion pictures.  On April 12, a large photograph of them and Jim Diamond were featured prominently in the Los Angeles Times.

In 1971, both Boeing 707s in the U.S. presidential fleet, commonly known as Air Force One, were designated by President Nixon as The Spirit of '76.

Jim Diamond still owns The Spirit of ’76 Vases, which he has not exhibited publicly since 1970.

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