Miners on an aerial tram used to descend into the Kimberley Diamond mines in South Africa, 1885.

Miners on an aerial tram used to descend into the Kimberley Diamond mines in South Africa, circa 1885. Diamonds were first discovered in South Africa in 1867.

The son of a Boer farmer by the name of Daniel Jacobs collected what he thought were shiny stones along the bank of the Orange River. Other kids in the neighboring villages would use the stones to play games. Soon, they caught the eye of a neighbor named Schalk van Nieker, who offered to buy one for money. The boy's mother laughed and just gave it to him.

Nieker passed the stone around to a few people to see if it had any value. It soon ended up in the hands of a physician and amateur geologist by the name of W.G. Atherstone, who came to the conclusion that it was a 21.25 carat diamond. Once the governor of Cape Colony purchased the diamond for £500, news began to spread throughout the region, and prospectors started to congregate in hopes of striking it rich.

Two Englishmen by the name of Cecil J. Rhodes and Barney Barnato decided to buy up the mines in the area. In 1888, they combined their holdings to create De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, establishing its headquarters in Kimberley, South Africa.

Most of the people who ended up working in the mines were Black migrant workers. Most of their lands had been seized by British colonists, and they had no other means of making a living other than to work in the mines for subsistence wages. Between 1897 and 1899, more than a thousand Black laborers died due to mining accidents and a host of disease-related illnesses.

The precursors to apartheid began to really take root in the city of Kimberley, with communities divided up by ethnicities and mixed marriages becoming outlawed. Certain public areas were reserved for "Europeans Only," and the movement of African people was heavily restricted. Apartheid only came to an end in the early 1990s.

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THE WORLD FAMOUS HISTORY AND PAST EVENTS

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