Kimberley's Big Hole is held to be the deepest hole ever dug by hand: from 1871 to 1914 up to 50,000 miners with picks and shovels went 240 metres down and took out 2,720 kg of diamonds.

1871 · 1914 · apart: 43 years

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The event

• The Eureka Diamond1867 · Hopetown, Orange River. In 1867 fifteen-year-old Erasmus Jacobs found a shiny pebble by the Orange River. It was a 21-carat diamond, the first authenticated in South Africa. The find set off the Kimberley diamond rush and made the region the world's great source of diamonds.

19th century · 20th century

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