[[Image:Panama Canal Locks.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Miraflores locks]]
The Originally the French had already attempted to build a canal through the isthmus, under the leadership of [[Ferdinand de Lesseps]], the visonary who built the[[ Suez Canal]]. He was the people's hero; the epitemy of a Frenchman. But this ended their attempt after 22,000 of them died, mostly due to yellow fever. Some 5,609 Americans died in the subsequent successful attempt to build the canal, the lower number reflecting medical advances of the time. The canal was not just an engineering, but also a medical triumph, as U. S. Army physician [[Walter Reed]] identified the mosquito ''Aedes aegypti'' as the carrier of yellow fever. Mosquito-control measures limited the spread of infection and made it possible to complete the work.
==Trivia==
*A well-known [[palindrome]] (a sentence that reads the same forwards and backwards) is:
:::A man, a plan, a canal—Panama!
The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough, 1977
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[[Category:Canals]]
