The Big Hole in Kimberley, South Africa, was once a diamond mine. In the last century, thousands of people flocked here to search for diamonds, digging a hole with a diameter of 500 meters and a depth of 400 meters using only picks and shovels.
In 1871, diamonds were discovered in Kimberley. Within a year, 3,500 people had arrived to stake claims in hopes of striking it rich. Day after day, they extracted over 25 tons of earth and rock daily using just their picks and shovels. A total of 3 tons of diamonds were mined from this site. By 1915, the massive 400-meter deep hole was abandoned due to numerous dangerous landslides.
Today, this record has been surpassed by a copper mine in Utah, USA. This mine reaches a depth of 774 meters and spans an area of 7.2 square kilometers.2 However, it was excavated using modern machinery, unlike the Big Hole which was dug by hand.
