What is the history of cana in panama?
Ever since the 1500s, men dreamed of having a passage across the narrow (50 miles wide) isthmus of Panama. It would save ships weeks of sailing around the southern tip of South America if they could only build a canal. After they successfully built the Suez Canal in Egypt, the French thought they could also build a sea-level canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Their attempt to construct a canal began in 1880. This attempt failed because a sea level canal, one without locks – to raise and lower ships – was impossible. The French were defeated by their poor design, stubborn leadership, a lack of sufficient financing and Yellow Fever, which killed thousands of workers including many top management and engineers. Some wealthy NY stock brokers thought they could make a profit by “engineering” a deal with Colombia, as Panama was at the time, a province of Colombia. They would pick up where the French left off, but they would build a canal with locks that would lift the ships and elimina
