Opus

Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks (a relative of Loeb) in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on May 21, 1924. They committed the murder – characterized at the time as "the crime of the century" – hoping to demonstrate superior intellect, which they believed enabled and entitled them to carry out a "perfect crime" without consequences. After the two men were arrested, Loeb's family retained Clarence Darrow as lead counsel for their defense. Darrow's twelve-hour summation at their sentencing hearing is noted for its influential criticism of capital punishment as retributive rather than transformative justice. Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years. Loeb was murdered by a fellow prisoner in 1936. Leopold was released on parole in 1958.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole, located in Russia, is the world's deepest man-made hole, reaching a depth of 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) or 7.6 miles (12.2 kilometers), surpassing the depth of the Mariana Trench and the height of Mount Everest. The drilling project, initiated by the Soviets in 1970, revealed unexpected findings such as the absence of the "Conrad discontinuity" transition from granite to basalt, the presence of liquid water at unexpected depths, and microscopic fossils from single-celled marine organisms dating back 2 billion years. Despite the significant depth achieved, the drilling faced challenges like increasing temperatures and rock densities, leading to the project's discontinuation in 1992, with the hole being sealed in 2005.