Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

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  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen...

Blue diamond found in Gauteng sells for R576 million

 


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The blue diamond recovered at Cullinan on 1 April 2021
The blue diamond recovered at Cullinan on 1 April 2021
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Petra Diamonds has sold a 39.3-carat blue gem for more than $40 million (around R576 million), making it one of the most expensive rough diamonds to date.

The small miner sold the exceptional Type IIb blue diamond to a joint venture between top producer De Beers and Diacore, a trading company owned by the billionaire Steinmetz family, it said on Monday. The stone fetched just over $1 million per carat and is the most expensive gem Petra has ever sold.

Petra found the diamond at the Cullinan mine in April. The mine, once owned by De Beers, is famous for both large and blue stones and was where world’s biggest diamond was found in 1905. Blue stones are among the most rare and valuable.

The sale is good news for Petra, which was forced to restructure its debt last year, when the Covid-19 crisis brought the industry to a standstill at a time when the company was already facing a mountain of debt and falling diamond prices. The shares, which were once worth more than $1.5 billion, closed up 1.1% on Monday.

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