A major search and rescue mission to locate a submersible that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic continues.
But as each long hour passes, the likelihood of the five in the sub surviving drastically dwindles.
The harrowing plight of those onboard has truly become a story that has captured the entire world’s attention.
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Incidents which have attracted the same level of fascination and intrigue like the missing sub are extremely rare.
But those that have shared a common theme of people desperately trying to survive against the odds with high-risk rescue operations being planned.
Examples include the rescue of the children in a Thai cave in 2018 and the Chilean miners in 2010 along with the Apollo 13 accident in 1970.
The Irish Mirror takes a closer look at some of the most incredible rescue and survival stories from years gone by.
Thai Cave Rescue 2018
Members of a junior football team became trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non Cave in the Chiang Rai province in Northern Thailand following heavy rain.
The assistant coach along with 12 members of the club aged between 11 and 16 went into the cave on June 23, 2018, after a training session.
The heavy rain which began shortly after they entered partially flooded the inside which blocked their way out and left them without an escape route.
Early rescue missions were unsuccessful as the water levels continued to rise coupled with strong currents. Nobody had any contact with the team for more than a week.
Experienced divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton from the UK were drafted in to help and the pair were first to locate the youngsters who were marooned on an elevated rock around 4 km from the cave’s mouth.
A number of options were discussed about the best way to get the boys out which included teaching them basic underwater diving skills or postponing the rescue until a new entrance was found or drilled.
Another option was to wait until the monsoon season was over which would have been a number of months.
But they eventually decided to go in on July 8 after pumping water out of the cave in the days prior after realising there would be a number of rain-free days before the next monsoon.
Between July 8 and July 10, all 12 boys and their coach were rescued from the cave after a complex operation that involved as many as 10,000 people, including more than 100 divers.
But two divers involved in the rescue did die.
They were Saman Gunan, 38, who was an ex-Royal Thai Navy SEAL. He died of asphyxiation during an attempted rescue on July 6 after delivering diving cylinders to the trapped group.
In December 2019, rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection that he contracted during the rescue mission.
Chilean Miners Rescue 2010
On August 5, 2010, 33 men working at the San José copper–gold mine in Chile became trapped after it partially collapsed.
They were stuck for 69 days before they were all rescued. Shortly after the partial collapse, a state-owned mining company took over the rescue efforts.
They began to drill exploratory boreholes in a bid to find the men.
On day 17, a note written in Spanish was taped to the drill which read “We are well in the shelter, the 33 of us.”
A coordinated rescue operation between three drilling rig teams, the Chilean government, NASA, and several global corporations brought the men to safety on October 13.
A specifically built capsule brought the men up the 700 metres to the surface as millions of people watched live around the world. All were in relatively good health.
Apollo 13 Accident 1970
During NASA’s third moon-landing mission with Apollo 13 - things didn’t go to plan.
The astronauts on board never made it to the lunar surface. An oxygen tank exploded just 56 hours into the mission which caused the crew to abandon the moon landing.
The spacecraft was severely damaged as a result of the fire but the three onboard crammed themself into a lunar module when heading back to Earth.
Before landing, they moved back to the command module.
They eventually splashed down in the South Pacific Ocean southeast of American Samoa on April 17, 1970.
It has since been referred to as "a successful failure" because all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
Amazon Jungle Plane Crash 2023
Earlier this month, four children who spent 40 days lost in the Colombian jungle after a plane crash were finally rescued.
All the adults who had been travelling with the children on the plane were killed in the crash.
Special Forces soldiers and indigenous volunteers who found the plane wreckage discovered half-eaten fruit at the crash site.
This led them to believe the youngsters onboard were still alive so they began searching the jungle.
After 40 days, Lesly, 13, Soleiny, 9, Tien Noriel, 4, and baby Cristin were located.
The group had been flying from a jungle location to San Jose del Guaviare - which is one of the main cities in the Amazon rainforest.
But disaster struck on the border between Guaviare and Caquetá when the plane crashed.
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