The Mirny town in Russia is home to one of the most productive diamond mines in the world. Mirny Diamond Mine, which is one of the largest excavations in history, and the second-largest man-made hole in the world, is located in Mirny, Yakutia, in the Siberian region of eastern Russia. This open-pit diamond mine is 1,722 feet (525 meters) deep, and 3,900 feet (1.25 kilometers) across. The excavated hole that holds the first rank is Bingham Copper Mine in Utah.
After World War 2, the soviet union was in need of money to help it rebuild and therefore, in 1955, they deployed a huge team of geologists to look for kimberlite fragments and indicator minerals. The kimberlite is usually associated with diamonds that hints at the presence of diamonds. The three geologists, Yuri Khabardin, Ekaterina Elagina, and Viktor Avdeenko, hit the motherload in the Siberian wilderness, 5000 miles east of Moscow. In 1957, Yuri Khabardin was awarded the Lenin Prize for this amazing discovery, one of Russia's top honors. After being ordered by Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, the construction began on the open-pit Mirny diamond mine, also called the Mir mine. But this was not an easy task, as the average winter temperatures in the region were as low as -40 ° C, cold enough to freeze oil, and shatter car tires and steel. Due to the thick layer of permafrost deposited over the surface, the workers had to use jet engines to thaw the ground and explosives to break through the permafrost to get access to the underlying kimberlite. During the night, the entire mine had to be covered so that the machines could be protected from freezing and not deteriorating. Three years later, in the 1960s, the mine was able to produce large numbers of diamonds and miners were extracting approximately 10,000,000 carats of diamonds annually, a good percentage of which were gem quality. After the discovery of this mine, Russia had become the world's third-largest producer of diamonds. Today the mine is off-limits to bystanders, open-pit mining has stopped and officially they are not mining for diamonds anymore. But there is still underground mining is going on.
Along with producing diamonds, Mirny diamond mine also kept a mystery aside. Once a claim was made that when helicopters come close to the mine, the airflow from the hole actually sucks them onto the ground and make them crash. Actually, this hole is extremely large, therefore many times the helicopters passing over it have been 'sucked in’ by its downward airflow. Subsequently, the airspace above the mine is off-limits to helicopters. But there is no proof of whether the claim is true or not.
After World War 2, the soviet union was in need of money to help it rebuild and therefore, in 1955, they deployed a huge team of geologists to look for kimberlite fragments and indicator minerals. The kimberlite is usually associated with diamonds that hints at the presence of diamonds. The three geologists, Yuri Khabardin, Ekaterina Elagina, and Viktor Avdeenko, hit the motherload in the Siberian wilderness, 5000 miles east of Moscow. In 1957, Yuri Khabardin was awarded the Lenin Prize for this amazing discovery, one of Russia's top honors. After being ordered by Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, the construction began on the open-pit Mirny diamond mine, also called the Mir mine. But this was not an easy task, as the average winter temperatures in the region were as low as -40 ° C, cold enough to freeze oil, and shatter car tires and steel. Due to the thick layer of permafrost deposited over the surface, the workers had to use jet engines to thaw the ground and explosives to break through the permafrost to get access to the underlying kimberlite. During the night, the entire mine had to be covered so that the machines could be protected from freezing and not deteriorating. Three years later, in the 1960s, the mine was able to produce large numbers of diamonds and miners were extracting approximately 10,000,000 carats of diamonds annually, a good percentage of which were gem quality. After the discovery of this mine, Russia had become the world's third-largest producer of diamonds. Today the mine is off-limits to bystanders, open-pit mining has stopped and officially they are not mining for diamonds anymore. But there is still underground mining is going on.
Along with producing diamonds, Mirny diamond mine also kept a mystery aside. Once a claim was made that when helicopters come close to the mine, the airflow from the hole actually sucks them onto the ground and make them crash. Actually, this hole is extremely large, therefore many times the helicopters passing over it have been 'sucked in’ by its downward airflow. Subsequently, the airspace above the mine is off-limits to helicopters. But there is no proof of whether the claim is true or not.
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