Soviet scientists in the 1970s decided they wanted to drill deeper into the Earth's crust than anyone else, eventually creating the Kola Superdeep Borehole which reached a staggering depth of over seven miles.

A closer look

Soviet scientists in the 1970s decided they wanted to drill deeper into the Earth's crust than anyone else, eventually creating the Kola Superdeep Borehole which reached a staggering depth of over seven miles. The project had virtually no practical purpose other than aggressive Cold War flexing, as they basically just wanted to beat the Americans in a geological measuring contest to the center of the planet. Drilling was forced to stop in 1992 because the temperatures down there reached 356 degrees Fahrenheit, turning the rock into a weird plastic-like substance that made the drill bits completely useless. Leaving a seven-mile-deep hole covered by a rusty metal cap in the middle of nowhere is the ultimate monument to the fact that humans will spend decades doing grueling labor just to win a petty international bet