From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the town of Kimberley in South Africa. See also Kimberley, Nottinghamshire for the town in England, and The Kimberleys for the region of Western Australia.
Kimberley is a town in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It uses Kimberley Airport.
In 1866, Erasmus Jacobs found a small white pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm De Kalk, near Hopetown. The pebble turned out to be a 21.25 carat (4.25 g) diamond. Later, an even larger 83.50 carat (16.7 g) diamond was found on the slopes of Colesburg Kopje, and led to the first diamond rush into the area. As miners arrived in their thousands, the hill disappeared, and became known as the Big Hole. A town, New Rush, was formed in the area, renamed to Kimberley in 1873, after the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Earl of Kimberley.History
