The History of the Panama Canal

An operation that was impossible only 30 years earlier, the American country rallied behind the laborers that were going to bend the isthmus between North and South America until it broke and a new path between the seas was created. Killer diseases, high costs, seemingly impossible excavations, all faced the engineers at the Canal Zone, but one by one they were overcome until the Panama Canal alone stood out from among the rubble and invited people of the world to come and cruise her waters - a new pathway for the ever-expanding, ever-changing human race.
Timeline:
1534-Charles I of Spain ordered the first survey of a proposed canal route through the Isthmus of Panama. More than three centuries passed before the first construction was started. The French labored 20 years, beginning in 1880, but disease and financial problems defeated them.
1903-Panama and the United States signed a treaty by which the United States undertook to construct an inter-oceanic ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama. …