The Note That Traveled 2,300 Feet

On August 22, 2010, a drill probe broke through rock at the San José mine in Chile's Atacama Desert. For seventeen days, thirty-three miners had been trapped a half-mile underground, and the nation had all but given up hope. When the drill bit was pulled back to the surface, workers found a scrap of paper wrapped around it, scrawled in red ink: Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33.…