The Panama Canal
Everything Everywhere Daily
00:00
The History of the Panama Canal
The ideal of a canal through Panama never went away over the centuries. In 1517, Vasco de Balboa crossed the isthmus from the Atlantic to the Pacific and found out just how small the distance was between the two oceans. The first real attempt at creating a canal took place by the builder of the Suez Canal, the French engineer Ferdinand de Laceps in 1881. Despite being only 40% the distance of the SEgypt Canal, a canal in Panama was a much greater engineering challenge due to the mountains, extreme precipitation during the rainy season, venomous snakes, dense jungle, and disease. Over 22,000 workers lost their lives on the project, again, mostly from
Play episode from 02:57
Transcript
