HONG KONG — Surely the picture of the month was of Chilean miner Mario Sepulveda thumping the air like a 2-year-old in jubilation that he was free after 68 days in a dank, dark dungeon more than 600 meters below the Atacama Desert.
More than a billion people around the world watched the spell-binding television pictures of the rescue of the 33 miners. Hard-bitten friends admitted to shedding tears of joy as the men were hauled one by one to the surface. Practical engineering help came from NASA and the United States, Canada and Europe. Pope Benedict XVI sent personal rosaries to the mostly Catholic miners.
There is something miraculous about the return of the miners from almost being buried alive to their blinking the fresh bright air of the desert. In spite of the repetition of the mystical number "33" (Jesus Christ supposedly died and rose again at the age of 33, and here were 33 miners who reached the surface after 33 days of digging the rescue shaft and a reported 33 changes of the drill bit), their rescue was as much a triumph of human faith, discipline, political determination, and engineering grit and capability.