The Eureka Diamond owes its fame to the fact that it was the first diamond spotted in South Africa. It was 21.25 carats; before lapidaries cut it down to a cushion-shaped brilliant that weighs 10.73 carats. It is a brownish-yellow diamond, now on display at the Mine Museum in Kimberley. The Kimberley Diamond Rush began when excavators found diamonds in South Africa, starting the Mineral Revolution.
Eureka Diamond
How Was The Eureka Diamond Found & Identified?
According to the De Beers website, the son of a Dutch farmer named Daniel Johannes Jacobs found the stone in 1866. The fifteen-year-old boy Erasmus Stephanus Jacobs found it near Hopetown on the Orange River.
Schalke van Niekerk, a neighbor in town who knew something about geology, became interested in the diamond. He tried to buy it from the Jacobs family, but they refused to accept money for it. Subsequently, Van Niekerk took the rock to John Robert O’Reilly, who confirmed that it was a diamond.
Following this, the best mineralogist in the Cape Colony, Dr. William Guybon Atherstone, said that the Eureka was the first diamond chanced upon in South Africa. Atherstone also confirmed that the rough diamond, weighing 24 carats, was worth £800.
At the 1867 Paris Exposition, Organizers displayed a glass copy of the Eureka Diamond at the Cape Colony’s booth while the real Eureka went to Windsor for the Queen Victoria’s viewing. Sir Philip Wodehouse, who ran the Cape Colony, bought the diamond for £500. But unfortunately, none of that money went back to the Jacobs family.
Later, Wodehouse took the Eureka Diamond with him when he returned to the UK in 1870. At this time, gemmologists cut the stone into a cushion-shaped brilliant, weighing 10.73 carats. Over the next 100 years, the diamond changed hands several times.
De Beers bought it in 1967 and gave it to the people of South Africa as a gift. Consequently, the Eureka Diamond is now on display at the Mine Museum in Kimberley, South Africa.
Read About More Famous Diamonds As Follows:
| The Orloff Diamond | The Cullinan Diamond |
| The Centenary Diamond | The Esperanza Diamond |
