Kimberley - Definition and Overview

Kimberley is a town in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It uses Kimberley Airport.

History

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 Colesbergkoppie, 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, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley (1826-1902).

The British built a concentration camp here during the Boer War to house Boer women and children.

External link

• South African Randlords (http://www.zarcoins.com/html/randlords.html)
• http://kimberley.co.za/

Kimberley is also the name of a number of other places:

• Kimberley, Nottinghamshire for the town in England
• Kimberley, British Columbia for the tourist town in Canada
• the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

This South Africa-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Kimberley).