I was walking out to mine in 1.8 land when I fell down a 1x1 hole down to bedrock and was killed by the fall. I walked all the way back there, which was about 2000 blocks from my home at Ironpass and when I got there, I fell down a similar hole about ten blocks away from the original one, dying again. After walking all the way back there, and collecting my shit, carefully, from the bottom of the hole, I proceed to go mining. I mined for about 15 minutes and had found a couple diamonds and around 25 gold, when I decided, I would mine the iron right below my feet. Just my luck, there was a lava pool underneath that iron. Needless to say I died.
I raged and didn't play for a couple of hours and when I went back on, I decided to go mining. Got about the same amount of stuff and then mined right into a lava pool again.
Moral of the story: NEVER DIG DOWN IN MINECRAFT