Kimberley, South Africa

Kimberley is the capital and largest city of South Africa's Northern Cape province, located about 110 kilometers east of the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The city carries considerable historical significance from its diamond-mining past and the siege it endured during the Second Boer War; British businessmen Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato made their fortunes there, and Rhodes founded the De Beers diamond company in the town's early mining days. On 2 September 1882, Kimberley became the first city in the Southern Hemisphere, and the second in the world after Philadelphia, to install electric street lighting, and Africa's first stock exchange was built there in 1881.