Theodore Roosevelt fomented Panama's secession from Colombia when the latter refused to let him build his canal.
Ortega's forces are dredging the river as part of an Iranian-sponsored project to build a canal along the Isthmus of Nicaragua that will rival the Panama Canal.
Mr Erdogan presented some ambitious development projects during his campaign, including a plan to build a canal from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and an entirely new city outside Istanbul.
The French had spent many years and thousands of lives trying to build a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and had been defeated by year-round heavy rains in mountainous mud, deadly diseases, and impossible expenses.
FORBES: The Panama Canal: When the U.S. Flexes Its Creative Muscle
Finally, Teheran announced it would build a dry canal connecting the two ports.
An old and controversial idea has therefore been revived: to build a peripheral canal to bypass the Delta and its pumps.
This reinforced the Americans' desire to build and control a canal across the isthmus of Panama, so that their ships could move between the Atlantic and the Pacific without going all the way round Cape Horn (as the American battleship Oregon had to do during the war).
EU-financed study released this week, which argues that the canal authorities should build a series of new locks.
The Army Corps of Engineers was engaged to build the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, in what was then the largest earth moving effort in North American history.
FORBES: Currents Of The U.S. Economy Run In Chicago River's Twisted History
Central College Nottingham said it wants to build the development on derelict land on Canal Street, next to the tram line.
There are other technologies one could say this of too: places which do not have canal networks already are most unlikely to build them, however important they were to 18th century economic development.
FORBES: China's Now The Top Market For Connected Smartphones And Tablets
No one thinks China is going to make drastic changes to what is a signature national programme. (And one from which it hopes to spin off lucrative contracts building railways in Algeria, Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere.) But it might postpone some of the dizzier schemes, such as one to build a freight line across mountainous northern Colombia to rival the Panama canal.
ECONOMIST: High-speed trains might be forced to go a little more slowly
应用推荐