Lucara

A few days ago, 52-year-old Lucas Ncipe, assistant general manager of the Canadian diamond mining company Lucara, received a phone call from one of his engineers working at the Karowe mine in Botswana. “We found something incredible,” was the phrase he heard. He almost dropped the phone when he realized what it was about: the second-largest diamond in the world, weighing 2,492 carats.

This precious gem, found at the Karowe mine in northeastern Botswana, the largest diamond producer in Africa, is described by Lucara, the company that made the discovery, as “one of the largest rough diamonds ever found.”