Panama Canal ..100 Franc share..Date 1886..Ferdinand De Lessops fac signature..

 The Panama Canal is one of the modern wonders of the world.

Some info.. 

The French were the first to attempt to build the Panama Canal in the 1880`s  money had been raised in Paris by Ferdiand De Lessops ..

However too much disease .. too  much rain..  too many problems etc ..

Eventually ..

 The United States took over the building  of a canal across the 50-mile stretch of the narrow Panama isthmus in 1904.

The project was helped by the elimination of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The chief engineer John Stevens devised innovative techniques and spurred the crucial redesign from a sea-level to a lock canal.

His successor, Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals, stepped up excavation efforts of a stubborn mountain range and oversaw the building of the dams and locks.

At the bottom of this document is the Facsimile signature of Ferdinand De Lessops.

In 1879, an international congress was held in Paris, which chose the route for the Panama Canal and appointed De Lesseps as leader of the undertaking.

Work began in 1881.

 The canal proved much more complicated to build than the Suez Canal.

After eight years, little progress appeared to have been made (it was eventually finished in 1914).

A French court found de Lesseps and his son Charles guilty of mismanagement.

Both were heavily fined and sentenced to imprisonment.

 De Lesseps did not go to jail, but his son paid for his elderly father's misjudgements with a year in prison.

De Lesseps died on 7 December 1894.

The  world-famous Panama Canal was transferred from the United States to Panama in 1999..

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