Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 8,792
England is no longer an island!
For the first time since the last ice age around 18,000 years ago, on December 1, 1990, one can walk from the European continent to the British Isles again on dry feet!
On this day, the breakthrough took place at exactly 12:12 a.m. when the Eurotunnel was being built!
Workers from France and Great Britain shake hands under the English Channel ...:
For seven years, 15,000 workers had dug from two sides a 50-kilometer-long tunnel that connects the French village of Coquelles near Calais with the English port city of Folkestone.
Napoléon Bonaparte had already dreamed of connecting France and Great Britain through a tunnel ...:
Since the beginning of the 19th century there had been plans to connect the two states by rail. Here is a plan from Denmark ...:
In 1856 a Frenchman had the idea of ventilating the tunnel through an artificial harbor that was to be built in the middle of the Channel on the Varne sandbank ...:
But insurmountable technical and political difficulties arose again and again.
In 200 years there have been 27 unsuccessful attempts to implement the tunnel project. Always at the instigation of the French, who were regularly thwarted by the hesitant attitude of the English.
The British fear of military intervention had played a role as well as the fear that foxes from the continent might bring rabies into England.
The caricature shows the commander in chief of the British Army, Field Marshal Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley at the turn of the century, who was one of the sharpest critics of the tunnel project.
Lord Wolseley flees on the British lion from the Gallic rooster that has just come out of the tunnel ...:
And I just wonder whether they will close the tunnel again after the "Brexit" or flood it ...?
For the first time since the last ice age around 18,000 years ago, on December 1, 1990, one can walk from the European continent to the British Isles again on dry feet!
On this day, the breakthrough took place at exactly 12:12 a.m. when the Eurotunnel was being built!
Workers from France and Great Britain shake hands under the English Channel ...:
For seven years, 15,000 workers had dug from two sides a 50-kilometer-long tunnel that connects the French village of Coquelles near Calais with the English port city of Folkestone.
Napoléon Bonaparte had already dreamed of connecting France and Great Britain through a tunnel ...:
Since the beginning of the 19th century there had been plans to connect the two states by rail. Here is a plan from Denmark ...:
In 1856 a Frenchman had the idea of ventilating the tunnel through an artificial harbor that was to be built in the middle of the Channel on the Varne sandbank ...:
But insurmountable technical and political difficulties arose again and again.
In 200 years there have been 27 unsuccessful attempts to implement the tunnel project. Always at the instigation of the French, who were regularly thwarted by the hesitant attitude of the English.
The British fear of military intervention had played a role as well as the fear that foxes from the continent might bring rabies into England.
The caricature shows the commander in chief of the British Army, Field Marshal Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley at the turn of the century, who was one of the sharpest critics of the tunnel project.
Lord Wolseley flees on the British lion from the Gallic rooster that has just come out of the tunnel ...:
And I just wonder whether they will close the tunnel again after the "Brexit" or flood it ...?
