The Panama Canal opened in a world already at war. The first ship passed through on 15 August 1914, two and a half weeks after the First World War began, and the opening was a low-key affair.
The events
- Opening of the Panama Canal1914 · Isthmus of Panama. Ferdinand de Lesseps's French attempt in the 1880s failed after malaria and yellow fever killed, by various estimates, more than 20,000 people. The US started again in 1904, beat the mosquitoes and built a system of locks with the artificial Gatún Lake. The 82-km canal opened on 15 August 1914, cutting the New York to San Francisco voyage by almost 13,000 km. It was handed to Panama in 1999.
- World War I1914–1918 · Sarajevo. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 drew the great powers into a war of the Entente against Germany and its allies. It killed millions and brought down the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires.
More amazing facts
- 1914 Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions, but the last one, Martha, died on 1 September 1914 — a month after World War I began.
- 1914 · 1928 The cheapest toll in Panama Canal history was 36 cents, paid in 1928 by writer Richard Halliburton, who swam it. The fee was set by his weight: 140 pounds.
- 1914 Gavrilo Princip was not eating a sandwich when the archduke's car arrived; that detail was invented in 2001.
- 1914 On one stretch of the front, the Christmas truce of 1914 was struck for the sake of the post: Belgian soldiers asked the Germans to pass their letters on to families living in occupied Belgium.
- 1914 · 1915 Winnie-the-Pooh is named after a real bear brought to London by World War I. In August 1914 Harry Colebourn, a Canadian cavalry vet, bought a cub from a hunter and named her Winnipeg; from 1915 she lived at London Zoo.
- 1914 Britain's King George V was a first cousin of both Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1914 Britain and Russia went to war against Germany — two cousins against the third.