Trapped Chilean miners sing national anthem in footage from inside mine

The first video footage of the 33 Chilean miners who have been trapped underground for three weeks shows the men in good spirits, singing the national anthem and chanting, "Long live Chile, and long live the miners."

The men shot the video with a camera sent down to them through a small shaft drilled to their emergency shelter in the San José mine. LINK: Youtube

The Astounding Subterranean Salt Cathedral

Deep underground in Poland lies something remarkable but little known outside Eastern Europe. For centuries, miners have extracted salt there, but left behind things quite startling and unique. Take a look at the most unusual salt mine in the world. LINK


Image Credit Gypso_banana_prune under CC

From the outside, Wieliczka Salt Mine doesn’t look extraordinary. It looks extremely well kept for a place that hasn’t minded any salt for over ten years but apart from that it looks ordinary. However, over two hundred meters below ground it holds an astonishing secret. This is the salt mine that became an art gallery, cathedral and underground lake.


Image Credit Il Conte Di Luna under CC

Underground Hill House

A home built underground that still has a breathtaking view! This is green living presented in totally inovative way. You’ll find this home in Vals, Switzerland, a design of SeArch and Christian Müller Architects.

Link – Via: planetoddity, Via: Neatorama

(image credit: Iwan Baan)

Russian Underground Submarine Base

It was a big underground submarine base and docks once in USSR. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Russian army left Ukraine it was partly abandoned and some of its parts was converted into a museum later.

More photos and information at this LINK.

The Underground City Of Wine

Milestii Mici is a small settlement, located south of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. It might not look like much , but it sits atop the greatest wine cellar in all of Europe. Milestii Mici has become internationally famous for its impressive wine collection, known as the Golden Collection.

The cellars of Milestii Mici hide approximately 2 million bottles of wine, of which 1,5 million are collection wines. The cellar complex is also the biggest one in Europe, stretching over 155 miles. At this point only 75 miles are in use, so there's enough room for more wine. LINK

Longest Underground Aquifer in the World Discovered

Roman engineers spent a century digging an underground aqueduct through 66 miles of stone in order to bring water to Syria. The previous longest underground water aqueduct was in Bologna; it was only 12 miles long.

The soldiers chiseled over 600,000 cubic meters of stone from the ground -- or the equivalent of one-quarter of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

"Over the first 60 kilometers, the tunnel has a gradient of 0.3 per thousand," explains the project director. That works out to 30 centimeters per kilometer -- an astonishingly shallow angle of descent. LINK

Link - Via: britannica

Awesome Underground Lakes

Underground lakes or caverns are basically large pools of water that gather or accumulate underneath the earth’s surface. So how does the water get into these inaccessible spaces underground? The answer lies in the movement of the earth through the centuries due to plate tectonics and earthquakes.

As the earth surface moves, empty spaces and caverns are sometimes formed below the surface. And water found on the top of affected areas seep into these spaces through the cracks and fissures created by the movement. Over time, the water accumulates in these underground caverns to form what we now call underground lakes. Thus, it usually takes many many many years for such underground lakes to form, which is why they are so amazing.

The photo above is Reed Flute Cave, China. LINKpho

Ajolote

Is it a worm, a snake, a lizard, or something out of a movie? No special effects here; this is a ajolote, a reptile found in Mexico that has only two legs. It lives underground, where front legs for digging are more valuable than hind legs that would only be dragged along. Link, Via: Neatorama

Burlington Underground Cold War City

A 35 acre subterranean Cold War City that lies 1000 feet beneath Corsham. Built in the late 50s this massive city complex was designed by Government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike. A former Bath stone quarry the city, code named Burlington, was to be the site of the main Emergency Government War Headquarters - the hub of the Country’s alternative seat of power outside London.

Over a kilometre in length, and boasting over 60 miles of roads. Blast proof and completely self-sufficient the secret underground site could accommodate up to 6,000 people, in complete isolation from the outside world, for up to three months.

The report (with lots more pictures) is from a blog about all kinds of underground things, created in support of the new movie City of Ember. The Burlington underground city was maintained until the 1980s, and finally decommissioned in 2005. Link, Via: Neatorama