The quest to explore the interiors of our planet has always been a priority for scientists as they look to find answers in the depths of Earth’s crust. In 1989, they achieved a breakthrough by digging the deepest hole ever—the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3—but soon discovered a terrifying sound coming from below, according to a report from Indy100. This mammoth drilling project took place in the Pechengsky District of Russia, near the Norway border.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Doğu Tuncer
The drilling was done by the Soviet Union in a bid to venture as deep into the Earth’s Crust as possible. The operations of this artificial dig project went underway in 1965 and it has been said that the digging process continued for over two decades and had attained success until 1989. It reached 12.262 km (7.61 miles) in 1989. The hole’s depth is calculated to be around 40,230 feet, which is roughly 12,262 meters into Earth’s surface.
Interestingly, this hole’s depth is equivalent to the height of Mount Everest and Mount Fuji if they are placed on top of one another. At the same time, this hole is said to be deeper than the famous Mariana Trench, which is located in the Pacific Ocean at a supreme depth of 36,201 feet below sea level. It took the Soviets almost two decades to drill 40,230 feet, but it could only reach about one-third of the way through the crust to the mantle when the project had to be halted in 1992, when the temperature reached 180C (356F) and the machine began to melt. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project was put on the shelf indefinitely due to lack of funding.
This is the cap of the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
They reached 40,111 feet of depth in 1989, after nearly two decades of drilling.
The two-decade-long drilling project gave us detailed insights into the depths of our planet and upon digging, it was found that the deep parts of the Earth’s crust were saturated with water and microscopic plankton fossils. Apart from the scientific discoveries, there were also rumors that the deep hole had mysterious noises coming from it, with many people claiming it to be the “pathway to hell.” To create more hype around this discovery, an urban legend was made popular that suggested that the sounds emerging from the hole came from people who existed down below – cynically called “hell.”
In the current scenario, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 has been owned by the Russian government. However, the digging site has been visited by locals and explorers and has gone on to be labeled as a mere “tourist attraction.”
After the successful expedition of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, very few countries stepped forward to explore the depths of our planet’s interiors. However, a recent report from The Guardian suggested that China undertook a digging project that would see them go 10,000 meters underneath the Earth’s surface for scientific purposes and also to trace possible oil and gas reserves.
An elderly woman in Wichita, Kansas who was experiencing hard times has now found hope in the kindness of others. It first started when a local landscaper decided to mow and clean up her overgrown lawn for free. Since then, she’s been given $625,000 in donations (and counting!) to help address her needs and raise her spirits.
It all started with Spencer B. of SB Mowing, a lawn care and pressure washing company. Spencer (who wishes his last name be omitted) runs his business both as a mower and as a content creator. He often offers his services for free to the elderly and veterans who cannot afford the upkeep of their lawns.
Spencer visited the elderly woman, Debbie, after Zach, her Uber driver, contacted him. Zach had seen how much she was struggling on her own and wanted to help. As Spencer and his dad cut Debbie’s lawn and cleared debris, they heard her story.
Debbie’s grief and relief
Debbie had been the full-time caregiver for her ailing husband until he died from stage four pancreatic cancer. Since then, her grief and other factors had prevented her from keeping up her home, lawn, and her own health. Struggle upon struggle was placed upon her.
“While she was grieving, she was also being taken advantage of,” Spencer wrote on Debbie’s GoFundMe. “A contractor took a $2,000 deposit for tree work and never showed up. A neighbor wrecked her car and didn’t pay for it. She fell three months behind on rent, put off dental and health care she genuinely needs, and there were days when she and her dogs went without food because she simply couldn’t afford it.”
Aside from free lawn care, Spencer decided to help Debbie get back on track. He and his dad bought everything from Debbie’s yard sale and donated it all to Habitat for Humanity to get her some cash in hand. Spencer also paid three months of Debbie’s back rent through his non-profit organization SB Mow It Forward.
Strangers donated to Debbie
Spencer then set up a GoFundMe for Debbie and shared her story. Within three days, friends and strangers alike donated over $625,000. Donations continue to roll in as of this writing. All of the money will be put into a trust for Debbie to use for essentials, medical care, dental care, and to help her transition to a senior living community when she is ready.
Spencer shared a video of him telling Debbie this news. She was floored when she found out that around 40 million people had seen the video of Spencer cleaning up her yard, and she had no idea he had set up a GoFundMe.
“I thought you already helped me,” Debbie said, welling with emotion. “I can’t believe it. How can people be so generous to help a stranger?”
With tears in her eyes, Debbie thanked Spencer, Zach, and all the 13,000 people who had donated to help her. Spencer even made a video to highlight Zach, as he was the one who brought Debbie’s troubles to Spencer’s attention.
This isn’t the only time Spencer’s deeds have made headlines. In 2024, he had raised $242,000 for a pet rescue that treated a cat he found while mowing a lawn. In 2025, he raised $850,000 to help Beth, an elderly woman in need of financial aid and accessibility care.
A lot of good can happen if we check in on our neighbors (and maybe offer to cut their lawns) every once in a while.
In Minnesota, 68-year-old Kathryn Woessner got out of her van and fell into a puddle beside it. The pool of mud was so deep that Woessner couldn’t get herself out; she compared it to quicksand. She was almost completely submerged, stuck in it for three days until two men spotted her and saved her life.
The two men, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, were riding their all-terrain vehicles nearby. On a whim, the two friends decided to ride on a trail that they hadn’t explored before that had been flooded. That’s when they spotted Woessner’s van in a clearing.
‘Help me’
Sandbeck and Gravalin went in to get a closer look. Next to the van, they saw what they thought was a corpse buried in the mud except for part of the face poking upward. That’s when they heard Woessner’s weak voice say, “Help me.”
Shocked at first, Sandbeck and Gravalin quickly went into action. It took them less than half an hour to pull Woessner out of mud and check in on her. They then called 911 to get volunteer firefighters, paramedics, and police to the scene for help. The tracking device on one of their vehicles helped provide coordinates to their location. Woessner explained to her saviors that she was stuck on her back, resulting in a serious sunburn on her face as she tried to yell for help for days.
Woessner was taken to Essentia Health-St. Joseph’s Medical Center where she is expected to make a full recovery. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and Woessner’s family were relieved, as she was officially reported missing for three days. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office thanked the other agencies that aided in the search and rescue of Woessner in a Facebook post.
The two friends were ‘guided’ there
While they were rightfully praised for their actions, Gravalin and Sandbeck say they were at the right place at the right time. In fact, they almost wouldn’t have found Woessner at all. Had they decided to take their vehicles on their usual routes, Woessner might not have survived.
“We ain’t heroes,” Sandbeck told KARE 11 News. “We’re just two guys that were out there riding, enjoying the day together, making fun of each other all day long like we always do, like buddies, but I have no doubt the hand of God was there guiding us there. Because that trail that we found her on, we actually drove past it.”
“We’ve driven past it for the last eight years and never went down,” added Gravalin. “And it was like, let’s go check that out,” Sandbeck added. “So we actually turned around and drove back down it.”
Regardless of reason, it was good for Woessner that they decided to take a detour.
George Washington knew his forces could not win the American Revolutionary War without some measure of sea power. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day,” he later wrote in a letter, “that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it everything honorable and glorious.”
The problem was that the American commander did not have a navy.
As a professor of early American history, I have taught courses on the American Revolution for more than 20 years and have written two books on its maritime dimensions. Washington’s solution wouldn’t come from a French shipyard or a congressional committee. It would come from a group of angry, out-of-work New England fishermen.
Supplying the army from the sea
In 1775, American ground forces managed to lay siege to the British army in Boston, but Washington needed provisions and military stores to sustain pressure on this key commercial hub. Looking out across the Atlantic Ocean, he noticed supply ships arriving in droves from Great Britain – unescorted – to supply the British army in Boston with guns and ammunition.
Unbeknownst to them, the British had already handed the American commander the ships and mariners he needed to capture those resources.
The Sons of Liberty, a network of political activists, had angered the British government by resisting taxes and commercial regulations – from the 1765 Stamp Act, which taxed printed documents, to the 1773 Tea Act, which controlled what tea leaves made their way into North American cupboards.
To punish rebels for their treason, Parliament passed the Restraining Act of 1775, banning New Englanders from fishing on the Atlantic Ocean. Overnight, thousands of skilled mariners – men who spent their lives wrestling 100-pound cod out of the freezing, storm-tossed North Atlantic – were out of a job. They weren’t just unemployed; they were furious. These fishermen left their work tools and ships behind, picked up weapons and joined the siege of Boston alongside American farmers.
Ashley Bowen, who lived and worked in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the principal fishing port in America at the time, recorded in his journal on May 22, 1775, “the fishermen are enlisting quite quick.”
A letter from a French diplomat to the foreign minister in Paris confirmed the news a couple of weeks later: “4,800 sailors seeing they were going to be deprived of their fishing rights, deserted their ships and joined their compatriots under arms.”
Washington, commissioned by Congress as commander in chief of all American armed forces in June 1775, saw an opportunity. He didn’t wait for Congress to build new frigates. Instead, he reached out to John Glover, a fish merchant from Marblehead and a commissioned officer under his command.
Washington’s plan was simple: Take the sturdy, salt-stained schooners used for fishing and turn them into armed, seagoing predators.
The first of these was Glover’s own fishing vessel and trade ship, Hannah. She wasn’t a formidable man-of-war but a 78-ton workhorse that spent summers at the Grand Banks and winters hauling rum and sugar from the Caribbean. Washington armed the trade ship with a few cannons, manned her with fishermen and sent her out to hijack British supply ships to help his army win the siege of Boston.
Just two days after the Hannah was underway, her crew captured the Unity, a sloop loaded with naval stores and lumber, supplies sorely needed by British forces in Boston.
Between August and October 1775, Washington outfitted a fleet of schooners at Congress’ expense to intercept British supply ships off the coast of New England. These vessels and crews, whose wages were paid by the American government, constituted what many historians consider America’s first navy. Washington reminded each captain that they sailed “at the Continental Expense.” These orders from Washington and the payments made by Congress made these ships official American warships, operating under the authority of what would become the federal government.
These recruits didn’t need nautical training; they were seasoned seafarers who had battled rough waters and gale force winds. On Oct. 13, 1775, George Washington wrote to his brother, John Augustine Washington, that the fishermen were “soldiers … who have been bred to the sea.”
In 1776, Washington informed the governor of Connecticut, who had asked to draft seamen from Washington’s regiments for his own naval expedition, that he could not spare any. “I must depend chiefly upon them for a successful opposition to the Enemy,” Washington explained.
Because the British navy was spread too thin, with too few warships available to police the Atlantic coastline, the armed fishing vessels were able to disrupt supply lines and keep the Revolution alive through its infancy. By the time the British realized the threat, the damage was done.
On Feb. 26, 1776, just a few months after Washington launched his fleet, British Admiral Molyneux Shuldham wrote in a report to his superiors that his forces in Boston were low on everything from naval supplies to weapons. What little they could find had to be purchased “at the most extravagant prices.”
The British government had not assigned military convoys to trans-Atlantic shipments at the start of the conflict in 1775. Now, Shuldham recommended arming the supply ships themselves, since valuable stores were being intercepted by rebels in small vessels, “however attentive our Officers to their Duty.”
He concluded the report with an ominous note, explaining that he simply did not have the resources to do everything that was being asked of him – support the army, blockade rebel ports and protect British ships bound for Boston: “I must beg leave to observe to you the very few Ships I am provided with to enable Me to Co-operate with the Army, Cruize off the Ports of the Rebels to prevent their receiving Supplies, or protect those destined to this place from falling into their hands.”
