"'I find it very difficult to convey how horrific it was... It was suffocating, wind so powerful that you had to sit down and curl into a ball...'"

"'... and turn your back to it so it didn’t knock you down the mountain. I couldn’t breathe with the ice and snow blowing so much in my face and then attempting to go up a very steep climb. It was just too many things at once.' They were two miles from their base camp and the large group of trekkers decided the safest thing to do was continue climbing for another mile or so in the hope of reaching a refuge. They would later discover it had been shut because park rangers had left to cast their mandatory votes in a presidential election the day before...."

From "Patagonia blizzard survivor: Our holiday turned into a ‘horror film’/A friend of the British woman who died while hiking in Chile said that park rangers had abandoned a refuge without telling them" (London Times).

"Mr. Guo, who obtained his pilot’s license at 17, was aiming to become the first person to fly solo in a small aircraft to all seven continents...."

"Antarctica was the only continent where he had yet to land, he said. On Saturday at about 5:30 a.m., he took off from Punta Arenas, a city near the southern tip of Chile, with a flight plan indicating that he was going to fly over the city and land again in Punta Arenas, prosecutors said. But without notifying aviation authorities, Mr. Guo flew his Cessna 182Q across the Southern Ocean and landed at a Chilean airstrip on King George Island at about 11:30 a.m., prosecutors said. Prosecutors said that Mr. Guo had submitted 'false flight plan data' and that when he deviated from that plan, aviation officials declared that his Cessna had been 'lost.'..."

From "Teenage Aviator Detained After Landing in Antarctica, Chile Says/Ethan Guo, 19, had been documenting his attempt to fly solo to all seven continents on social media. He is no longer in custody but has no easy way to leave an island off Antarctica’s coast" (NYT).

"He advised 12 presidents — more than a quarter of those who have held the office — from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr."

With a scholar’s understanding of diplomatic history, a German-Jewish refugee’s drive to succeed in his adopted land, a deep well of insecurity and a lifelong Bavarian accent that sometimes added an indecipherable element to his pronouncements, he transformed almost every global relationship he touched.... He was the only American to deal with every Chinese leader from Mao to Xi Jinping. In July, at age 100, he met Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders in Beijing, where he was treated like visiting royalty even as relations with Washington had turned adversarial. He drew the Soviet Union into a dialogue that became known as détente, leading to the first major nuclear arms control treaties between the two nations. With his shuttle diplomacy, he edged Moscow out of its standing as a major power in the Middle East, but failed to broker a broader peace in that region. Over years of meetings in Paris, he negotiated the peace accords that ended the American involvement in the Vietnam War, an achievement for which he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize...."

Writes David Sanger, in "Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped Nation’s Cold War History/The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East" (NYT).

With an eye fixed on the great power rivalry, he was often willing to be crudely Machiavellian, especially when dealing with smaller nations that he often regarded as pawns in the greater battle. 

"The name Patagonia comes from the word patagón used by Magellan to describe the native people whom his expedition thought to be giants."

"It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 1.80 m (~5′11″) compared to the 1.55 m (~5′1″) average for Spaniards of the time."

In Chile, today's "History of" country.

"Rescued Miners’ Secrecy Pact Erodes in Spotlight."

Oh, no. I sense that the recent joy will melt into tragedy. What personal details do these men know about each other, and what antipathy will arise as they tell each other's stories and disagree about what really happened?

“We’re poor — look at the place we live... you live off our stories, so why can’t we make money from this opportunity to feed our children?”

Miners have asked for as little as $40 and upward of $25,000 for interviews....

“We paid $500 for the interview,” Ari Hirayama of Asahi Shimbun of Japan, said upon exiting the house. “And it felt like he was withholding details.”

33 men with 69 days together. That's over 50,000 hours of human drama to be remembered and put into words — words that men who've always been poor can now sell. What a strange market! So there is the betrayal of the secrecy pact being broken, and the competition for money, in which the most talkative and imaginative men will win the most and, perhaps, cause the most pain.

[One] interview also touched on the crying fits some men had, the unsanitary conditions they endured, even the rumors that some had sexual relations with others underground...

We will never hear the end of this. 

The 33 Chilean miners, who know they will be trapped below ground for months, display their living conditions to the world...

... and sing the national anthem to express their appreciation that people have the courage to go to all the trouble of rescuing them.

Think of all the miners in the past who have been trapped and were not rescued. Imagine knowing even one human being was buried alive and not making the effort — whatever the expense — to get them out.

ADDED:

"This is our casino," the miner says at one point, showing a table where the miners, he says, had made some makeshift dominoes.

It is the best thing to do, under the circumstances. In the above-ground world casinos are deliberately constructed without windows.

33 men, trapped 2300 feet underground, must wait 4 months for rescue.

A mine in Chile. For 17 days, there was no contact with the men. Now, there is communication — such as the note from the miners: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter." There is hope and jubilation and food and water.

"It will take months to get them out," [said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera]. "They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong."

Mr Pinera also saw images of the miners taken by a camera that was lowered down the borehole....

"Many of them approached the camera and put their faces right up against it, like children, and we could see happiness and hope in their eyes," Mr Pinera said.

It's hard to begin to imagine the emotions of the men and the people above ground who love them. First, the shock of the cave-in, with the uncertainty — both underground and above — about survival. Then the 17-day wait, with hope and suffering changing all the time. Then, the immense joy of contact, the families above ground all learning their men are alive and well and the men knowing their loved ones know they haven't died. All the basics of getting food and water. The comfort of notes back and forth. The window to the outside world that is the camera. What a relief to know that rescue is coming. But the wait is so long.

Think what it must be like to be trapped in a group that size, for that long. What do you think they are doing, with all that time? I assume that, since they were miners, they have mental resources for dealing with the fears of confinement and danger that far exceed ours, so maybe it is a bit presumptuous to try to put ourselves in their place, but let's try. I think I would devote myself, above all, to preserving a calm attitude for everyone. You couldn't have any fighting or craziness.

Then, what would you do about the boredom? You would talk, but perhaps you'd get sick of the men who talk too much, and you can't have talk that is upsetting or arguments about what's okay to talk about and what isn't. There would be much prayer, maybe too much for some people. But there are 33 of you, you'd break into small groups or pairs. Some would be religious, others would play games or tell stories. Some would keep to themselves. Would you make sure that no one was despairing or lonely?

There are some ways in which the terrible limitations would intensify the richness of life. And, upon rescue, the true richness of ordinary life will be brilliantly obvious to them. The love, the light, the air — why do we not see that overwhelming beauty all the time?

Standing one's ground... after the ground has moved.

"One man swings a thick metal chain. Another grips an ax. An older gentleman favors a wooden pole. And a 20-year-old spoiling for a fight has prepared a garrote — a menacing wire tied between two handles — to confront any intruders."