In 1859, work began on the construction of the Suez Canal, under the direction of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

CNN: Friday,

De Lesseps's insistence that the canal be built without locks had led engineers to try to cut directly through the rock to sea level.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal

De Lesseps was ruined, his son imprisoned for fraud.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal

The plan had the backing of the French government, but it was financed mostly through public subscription, the personal savings of thousands of ordinary French people who regarded de Lesseps as a hero on a Napoleonic scale.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal

Fresh from constructing a sea-level canal through the flat Egyptian sand, de Lesseps was determined, without having set foot in Panama and after only the vaguest of topographical studies, that his project through the mountainous central American isthmus would also be a sea-level canal, requiring no locks to cope with changes in altitude.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal