Shortly after 11 a.m. on December 1, 1990, 132 feet below the English Channel, workers drill an opening the size of a car through a wall of rock. This was no ordinary hole–it connected the two ends of an underwater tunnel linking Great Britain with the European mainland for the first time in more than 8,000 years.
The Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” was not a new idea. It had been suggested to Napoleon Bonaparte, in fact, as early as 1802. It wasn’t until the late 20th century, though, that the necessary technology was developed. In 1986, Britain and France signed a treaty authorizing the construction of a tunnel running between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France.
Over the next four years, nearly 13,000 workers dug 95 miles of tunnels at an average depth of 150 feet (45 meters) below sea level. Eight million cubic meters of soil were removed, at a rate of some 2,400 tons per hour. The completed Chunnel would have three interconnected tubes, including one rail track in each direction and one service tunnel. The price? A whopping $15 billion.
After workers drilled that final hole on December 1, 1990, they exchanged French and British flags and toasted each other with champagne. Final construction took four more years, and the Channel Tunnel finally opened for passenger service on May 6, 1994, with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and France’s President Francois Mitterrand on hand in Calais for the inaugural run. A company called Eurotunnel won the 55-year concession to operate the Chunnel, which is the crucial stretch of the Eurostar high-speed rail link between London and Paris. The regular shuttle train through the tunnel runs 31 miles in total–23 of those underwater–and takes 20 minutes, with an additional 15-minute loop to turn the train around. The Chunnel is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world, after the Seikan Tunnel in Japan.
from History.com - This Day in History - Lead Story
For America, the greatest single controversy of the Second World War has always been the attack on Pearl Harbor. The success of the Japanese assault seared the psyche of the nation. How, with the United States reading the highest-level Japanese diplomatic codes, could the country be caught by surprise? How, despite a November 27, 1941, waning of imminent war with Japan, could the Pacific Fleet be found at anchor? How, despite the brilliant and heroic efforts of its gnome-like cryptanalysts, could the nation have been so unprepared? Some historians have argued that the answer lies with human failure, others that it rests with criminal conspiracy. In its fixation on self-flagellation, however, America has usually ignored another possibility: The answer may center not on what the Americans did wrong, but on what the Japanese did right.
After World War II, fallen American service personnel rode the rails to their resting places.
After repeated attempts by the Allies to stymie Japanese cryptographers during World War II, the Americans succeeded by developing a secret code based on the language of the Navajos.
The Japanese cracked every American combat code until an elite team of Marines joined the fight. One veteran tells the story of creating the Navajo code and proving its worth on Guadalcanal.
The January 2018 issue features a cover story about John Barry, widely acknowledged "Father of the U.S. Navy"
John Marshall Branum knew about abolition and slavery in the South from an early age. His parents were both Swedenborgian, members of a Christian sect founded in the 18th century that followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a theologian and philosopher known for his praise of the spiritual character of the African people. When the Civil War began, the 21-year-old Branum was enrolled at the Hopedale Normal School, a teachers’ college near his hometown of Bridgeport, Ohio. The school, which counted future Union icon George Armstrong Custer among its alumni, had been established by New England abolitionists in 1849.
Fought across the length and breadth of South Vietnam, the 1968 Tet Offensive ended in a military defeat for the Communists but, according to conventional wisdom, crippled President Lyndon B. Johnson politically and undermined public support for the war because of its scale and casualties
A Congressional committee kept a close eye on Union generals Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War ranks among the indispensable sources on the Union war effort. Published in eight volumes between 1863 and 1866 and reprinted and indexed by Broadfoot Publishing in 1998, this set consists of more than 5,000 …
Joining the American intervention in Vietnam, Australia experienced similar battlefield successes in-country and political setbacks on the home front
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Readers share dispatches about notable Chiricahua Apache woman Huera and the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota
Robert Brown profiles Charles Coatesworth Rawn, one of the overlooked frontier Army officers of the Indian wars era
Colin Calloway recounts the most lopsided American Indian defeat of the U.S. Army — no, not on the Little Bighorn
Ted Meyers expounds on the life of Chief Joseph, sometime leader of the Nez Perce during their 1877 flight/fight
Michael P. O’Connor catalogs the comings and goings of famous Westerners to and from New York City
A hoary English law often invoked in America has a revolting backstory.
On March 3, 1836, three days before the iconic last stand, Texian couriers slipped several dispatches through Mexican lines. Have those letters vanished from history?
Oklahoma sculptor Harold Holden honors such homegrown heroes as lawman Bass Reeves and cowboy humorist Will Rogers
Matthew Mayo splits his time between New England and the West, writing both nonfiction and fiction
This old editor feels a kinship with author and Western adventurer Stephen Crane
Civil War Times Advisory Board Member Harold Holzer delivered a speech at Gettysburg’s Remembrance Day, November 19, 2017, celebrating the 154th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and examining current monument issues. His full remarks were as follows: Some three score and seven miles from this spot—in Washington—stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Not that one; another …
Major General William B. Franklin was a Union corps commander in various theaters during the war, but battlefield success typically eluded him.
Anthony Comstock, notorious anti-obscenity campaigner, served in the Union Army during the Civil War.