With the possible exception of Herbert Hoover who became famed for other things, John Hays Hammond was the world's most famed mining engineer. From early youth he was familiar with horses, guns and gold mining. He mined gold with Cecil Rhodes, became an intimate of rulers and statesmen, a contented and hale old man in his last years. But his life once hung by a thread when, after the failure of the Jameson Raid into the Transvaal, Hammond was sentenced to death by the Boers for conspiracy. The sentence was commuted and he got...
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