Benchmarks: October 10, 1913: Atlantic and Pacific waters meet in the Panama Canal
by Allison Mills
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
On Oct. 10, 1913, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in his Washington, D.C., office. At that moment, more than 6,400 kilometers away, about seven metric tons of dynamite exploded, clearing the final obstruction in the Panama Canal. Deep within the Culebra Cut, waters from the Atlantic Ocean finally met waters from the Pacific Ocean, marking the end of major construction on the 77-kilometer-long canal.
Breaching the Isthmus of Panama — a strip of land only a few tens of kilometers wide linking North and South America — would save ships from having to sail around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, thousands of kilometers out of the way. It was an achievement four centuries in the making.