Word: nooitgedacht
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...diamonds are found in mines thousands of feet underground. What is left of known diamond-bearing top soil is probed by individual diggers who average between $15 and $800 a year. Last month the vast De Beers Diamond Co. threw open to prospectors 950 acres of a farm called Nooitgedacht (Never-thought-it-would-come-true), 20 miles from Kimberley, last remaining De Beers diamond grounds. Eighty-one diamond prospectors and their Negro helpers lined up for the rush...
...toot of a motor horn, the prospectors stormed Nooitgedacht, began pegging out their 45-foot-square claims. The Negro laborers shoveled furiously through three or four feet of clay to a layer of gravel which the prospectors scooped up, rocked in hand sieves and dumped on sorting tables. The diggers (who will pay De Beers 10% of their finds) were a mixed lot. Among them were a monocled Scot known as "Donal the Duke"; bearded, Bible-carrying "Uncle Pete the Sky Pilot," and big, burly, sombrero-wearing Jacob Venter, 51, who has spent half his life looking for diamonds...
...from hand to hand. The stone was a "Cape yellow" weighing 511¼ carats, a nearly perfect octahedron and one of the biggest diamonds ever found in South Africa.* Next day Venter sold it for $51,100. Mannetjie's cut: $280. While other prospectors feverishly dug away in Nooitgedacht, Venter said merely: "Man, I been smiling so much it hurts...
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