chunnel

A quarter of a century ago on the day, French president François Mitterrand (*1916 – †1996) and Queen Elizabeth II boarded the royal Rolls Royce, their spouses following in an inaugural Citroën, the cars loaded onto the autorack of a train—which would eventually ferry passengers and haul freight, to mark the opening of the Channel Tunnel with their fifty kilometer journey one hundred meters below the bed of the English Channel (la Manche). Despite being beset with delays and cost-overruns, this feat of engineering that significantly cuts transit time between the UK and the continent has proven itself to be an enduring success and is the culmination of project first envisioned over a century ago during the reigns of Victoria and Napoleon III exploring the idea of a mined tunnel under the water. Learn more at the link above.