At 10,911 meters down, the deepest point on Earth, a cracked window nearly doomed the first crewed dive. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh pressed on in the Trieste in 1960, and then nobody returned for 52 years.
The deepest point on Earth, located roughly seven miles down in the Mariana Trench, has been reached by only a small number of people since the first attempt in 1960. That initial descent nearly ended in failure, and the risks and costs involved kept government agencies away from the site for decades. It was only through privately funded missions that researchers returned, eventually collecting sa…