33 Chilean miners were trapped underground

On 5 August 2010, a section of the San José copper and gold mine near Copiapó, Chile collapsed, sealing 33 miners roughly 2,300 feet below the Atacama Desert. For 17 days no one above ground knew whether they had survived; the men rationed two days’ worth of emergency food across more than two weeks.

Then a probe drilling into the refuge came back with a note taped to it, written in red ink: “We are fine in the shelter, the 33 of us.” The message turned a presumed tragedy into the most-watched rescue effort of its era.

Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33.

Engineers bored a narrow escape shaft and built a steel capsule, the Fénix, to haul the miners up one at a time. On 13 October 2010 — 69 days after the collapse — the last man reached the surface, all 33 alive, before an estimated global audience of a billion.