Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi looks at a large diamond discovered in Botswana at his office in Gaborone on August 22, 2024.
Image: Monirul Bhuiyan / AFP©
After the reported discovery of the world’s second biggest diamond in Botswana, a massive 2,492-carat stone by Canadian mining company Lucara, here are other famous diamond discoveries:
Biggest ever: the Cullinan
The largest gem-quality diamond ever found, by far, is believed to be the Cullinan, discovered in 1905 in South Africa and weighing 3,106 carats.
Among the stones cut from it was the Star of Africa, which is part of the British crown jewels on display in the Tower of London.
Dethroned: Sewelo
The 1,758-carat Sewelo diamond was until Thursday the second biggest diamond in history.
It was mined in Botswana also by Lucara in 2019.
Luxury group LVMH, owned by Bernard Arnault, previously listed as the world’s richest man, bought the tennis-ball sized diamond in January 2020.
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Lesedi La Rona
The 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona—a diamond also the size of a tennis ball—was discovered at Karowe, northeastern Botswana, also by Lucara in November 2015.
It was bought by British jeweller Laurence Graff for $53 million in September 2017.
Many discoveries in Botswana
Other exceptional diamonds have been found over the past four years in Botswana by Lucara (1,174 carats in June 2021, 1,080 carats in August 2023 and 998 carats in November 2020) and by Debswana, which is jointly owned by the South African government and diamond company De Beers (1,098 carats in June 2021).
The Excelsior
The Excelsior diamond, found in 1893 in South Africa, weighed 995 carats uncut. The biggest stone cut from it is 69 carats, which was bought in 1996 by the jeweller Robert Mouawad.
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The Star of Sierra Leone
The diamond was found in Sierra Leone in 1972 and weighed just under 969 carats and yielded 17 stones, the biggest of which is 53.96 carats.
Lesotho
British miner Gem Diamonds said in January 2018 it had discovered the 910-carat stone at the Letseng mine in the landlocked southern African country of Lesotho.
The Incomparable
The stone weighing 890 carats was found in the 1980s in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, by a young girl playing outside her house near the tailings from a mine. The biggest stone cut from it is 407 carats.
