Panama Canal
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A canal in the Isthmus of Panama. Completed in 1914, it was built by the Americans under President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.
The French had already attempted to build a canal through the isthmus, but couldn't do it. 22,000 of them died, whereas only 5,609 Americans died.
The canal was thus not just an engineering, but a medical triumph, credited to U. S. Army physician Walter Reed. 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!