How They Dug the Deepest Hole on Earth

The Soviets were really big on proving they were the best at everything, whether it was science, nuclear weapons, the space race, or Olympic athletes. That probably had something to do with why they decided to dig the deepest manmade hole on earth. Oh, there were plenty of scientific research reasons, but the expense involved leads one to believe it was mainly another superlative they could brag about.  

The Kola Superdeep Borehole is more than seven miles deep, or 12,262 meters, to be exact. The Soviets kept digging for 19 years, from 1970 to 1989, when the fall of the Berlin Wall suddenly shifted government priorities (like survival). But the project had other problems, too, that had to do with the earth and what's going on seven miles down there. Half as Interesting explains the project in a little over seven minutes; the rest of the video is an ad. (via Digg)