Let’s call it Kryptonite

Breathless rumours are doing the rounds that the largest diamond ever found is currently stashed in a Johannesburg bank vault, according to an article by Matthew Hill in Mining Weekly, a South African trade publication. Some reports say it’s as big as a soccer ball. Judging by the picture alongside, either the soccer ball is rather smaller than regulation size, or they’re making huge cellphones again.

Granted, if the claimed size of 7,000 carats is accurate, not only would this diamond be twice as large as the famed Cullinan diamond, which was the world’s largest uncut diamond when it was discovered over a century ago, but it would also be more than 150 times the size of the largest green diamond ever found.

The find was reported to the media by Brett Jolly, described as a director of an obscure property developer named Two Point Five Group, which is apparently a shareholder in the unnamed mine where it was discovered. Jolly and his company appear to be just as mysterious as the claimed diamond. Google knows Two Point Five Group only as a company in New York State company licensed by the state’s Department of Labour as an asbestos contractor.

A story on the claim by Natasha Joseph in the Cape Times quotes “an insider” as saying: “No one has heard anything, not even rumours. The general reaction is that if (the diamond has been found), and if (Jolly) is shooting his mouth off the way he is, we would have known about it.”

I propose the name Kryptonite for the stone. What better to name it after than a piece of cut green plastic used in a film about a mysterious superhero?