Modern Marvel?
The Suez Canal in Napoleon's Time and Ours
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Early on in history people were interested in linking together the Nile River and the Red Sea.
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By connecting both the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea through the Nile it could cut travel and trade time.
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The first completion of the canal was by Darius I who conquered Egypt.
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Towards the end of the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte was interested in completing the canal for his own gain and the screw out the British people.
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His exploratory commities found that the Red Sea was 10 meters higher than the Mediterranean Seas, making the canal way too expensive to complete.
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A group from France entered into Egypt and formed an association to collect data about both seas, basically proving that Napoleon was wrong.
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In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Said Pasha to create a company to construct a maritime canal, as a reward for completing the canal the company would run it for 99 years. After it was done running the canal, it would turn control over to the Eyptian government.
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Napoleon III wasn't enthusiastic about the canal like his grandfather the original Napoleon.
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The canal finally opened to traffic on November 17, 1869; after the reservoir was full of water from both the Red and Mediterranean Sea.
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The final cost of the canal was one hundred million dollars, double what the original expected cost was.
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In 1956, there was the Suez Crisis dealing with the United States and some other European nations and also some Communist nations.
wikipedia.com
sorry this one is bad but this is the second one i did, the first one got deleted when i tried to add my picture :-(
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