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Trieste Leads the Way

January 23, 2016

Fifty-six years ago today, Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh made history by diving inside the U.S. Navy bathyscaphe Trieste to the deepest known spot in the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. Nearly a year after the historic dive, their accomplishments were celebrated as part of President Kennedy’s Inauguration Day parade in Washington, D.C. (shown here). Piccard and Walsh are two of just three people to have ever descended to the Mariana Trench. The third is filmmaker and explorer James Cameron, who later donated his sub, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, to WHOI.(Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)