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25 unusual facts about Panama Canal


Allen Sangree

to locate some Panamanians who had recently came to town with a possible connection to William Nelson Cromwell and the Panama Canal.

Baltra Island

Crews stationed at Baltra patrolled the eastern Pacific for enemy submarines and provided protection for the Panama Canal.

Berendrecht Lock

In July 2009, it was announced that the Belgian dredging company Jan De Nul, together with a consortium of contractors consisting of the Spanish Sacyr Vallehermoso, the Italian Impregilo and the Panamanian company Grupo Cusa, had been awarded the contract to build the six new locks on the enlarged Panama Canal to accommodate larger Post-Panamax vessels.

Bienville Square

Theodore Roosevelt spoke in the square in 1905 about the importance of the Panama Canal to the port of Mobile.

Canal Dreams

The ship is trapped in the Panama Canal as a result of an international crisis and anchors in Gatun Lake.

Cec Fifield

The team sailed on the Orsova via the Panama Canal and played an exhibition game in New York before arriving in England.

Colón Province

This province has traditionally been focused in commerce (through the Colón Free Zone, Panama Canal and its banking activities), but also has natural resources that are being developed as tourist attraction, such as coral reefs and rainforests.

In the nineteenth century, beginning as early as the 1840s, blacks from the Caribbean and West Indies immigrated to Panama to assist to build the Panama Railway and the Panama Canal.

Corozal American Cemetery and Memorial

The Silver Cemetery was originally established as a segregated cemetery for the "Silver Roll" (Black people of West Indian origin) employees of the Panama Canal.

Dan Smoot

Another issue lionized Douglas MacArthur after the his death in the spring of 1964, and a later 1964 issue opposed a proposal by President Lyndon B. Johnson to transfer sovereignty of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama.

David H. Popper

After spending three years as ambassador to Chile he finished his diplomatic career as special representative for Panama Canal Treaty Affairs.

Edward L. Berthoud

In the early 1850s he worked as a surveyor on the Panama Canal.

Francesco Ragonesi

He was appointed Apostolic delegate and extraordinary envoy to Colombia on 7 September 1904; during his delegation, he favored the opening of the Panama Canal in that country.

Freya Hoffmeister

She will return home for four months, resuming the trip in September 2012, paddling north past Peru and Ecuador, cross the equator and pass Colombia and paddle through the Panama Canal then south past Venezuela, ending the second 8,000 km leg in Georgetown, Guyana.

George Headley

Neither of Headley's parents was from Panama; his father was from Barbados and his mother from Jamaica, but they had moved to Panama while DeCourcey worked on the construction of the Panama Canal.

Gorgasella

The genus is possibly named after William Crawford Gorgas, who eliminated yellow fever in Panama, thus ensuring the construction of the Panama Canal.

Maduro Holding

Following the opening of the Panama Canal, Royal Dutch Shell established an important petroleum refinery in the port of Willemstad due to its naturally deep harbor, its stable government, and Curaçao's proximity to Venezuelan oil fields.

Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena Region

From the late 18th century to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, thousands of trans-oceanic voyages stopped by Punta Arenas as the most convenient strait between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Municipal Warehouse No. 1

The development of the Panama Canal led Los Angeles business leaders to believe that, if modern port facilities could be built, the world's commercial fleet would descend on Los Angeles.

Pedro Miguel Fault

The Pedro Miguel Fault is a seismic fault that runs beneath the Panama Canal and near Panama City, home to approximately 1.2 million of Panama's approximately 3.3 million inhabitants.

Rail transport in Panama

The railway greatly assisted in the building of Panama Canal, which closely paralleled and in some places took over the rail line.

Standard-type battleship

Tennessee, California and West Virginia emerged as the most modernized, though their widened beam exceeded the Panama Canal restrictions which limited their operations to the Pacific.

The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut

At the same time, the construction of the Panama Canal is underway as a joint operation between Panama and the United States, and President Theodore Roosevelt has personally come to inspect the construction of the Culebra Cut.

War Plan Orange

As originally conceived, it anticipated a withholding of supplies from the Philippines and other US outposts in the Western Pacific (they were expected to hold out on their own), while the Pacific Fleet marshaled its strength at bases in California, and guarded against attacks on the Panama Canal.

William Kennish

William Kennish (born 1799, in Maughold, Isle of Man, died, March 19, 1862 in New York City), was a poet, engineer, explorer, scientist, inventor, and the first person hired by the United States government to explore a route for a Panama Canal.


Alfred Bulltop Stormalong

Among other things, the ship was said to have drilled the course of the Panama Canal by slamming into the Panamanian coast, and to have gotten stuck in the English Channel, which required the crew to grease the ship's hull with soap.

Aristides Royo

President Jimmy Carter negotiated the Panama Canal treaties with General Torrijos in 1978, which were opposed by then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.

Convoy Faith

The freighter MV Port Fairy, carrying ammunition, was ultimately bound for Australia and New Zealand via the Panama canal.

Coral Princess

During fall, winter, and spring the Coral Princess and her sister ship Island Princess run 10/14-15 day Panama Canal cruises with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, San Juan del Sur, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Cartagena, Colombia, and Oranjestad, Aruba.

Crystal Serenity

It was followed by two Caribbean/Panama Canal voyages and a combined Christmas/New Year Mexican Riviera cruise, round-trip from Los Angeles.

David Allee

Allee’s 1997 photographic series, “A Man a Mile,” documents the New York CitySandhog.” Sandhogs are builder/miners responsible for the Panama Canal, and much of New York City's infrastructure.

Edwin Bowman Lyon

On July 1929, he was commanding the 25th Bombardment Squadron at the Panama Canal.

Estevan Antonio Fuertes

From 1870 to 1871, he was chief engineer of the American Isthmian Canal expeditions to Tehuantepec and Nicaragua to investigate and report on the practicability of a ship canal connecting the Caribbean and the Pacific.

George C. Wheeler

Wheeler began studying ants at the Barro Colorado Island research station in the Panama Canal in 1924, having been urged to go to the tropics by William Morton Wheeler, who had mentored him at Harvard together with Charles Thomas Brues.

Henry W. Butner

Before being promoted to major general on 1 February 1936, Butner commanded additional units and had once again traveled across America before taking command of the Panama Canal Department.

History of Costa Rica

This was compounded by transportation problems - the coffee-growing areas were mainly on the Central Valley and only had access to the port in Puntarenas on the Pacific Coast, and before the Panama Canal was opened, ships from Europe had to sail around Cape Horn in order to get to the Pacific Coast.

Howard C. Petersen

In addition, Petersen served as a Director of the Panama Canal Corporation, and a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Huckins Yacht Corporation

They were assigned to specific outposts in the Panama Canal, Miami, Florida, the Hawaiian Sea Frontier at Pearl Harbor, in the Central Pacific, and a training center in Melville, Rhode Island.

Jaime Gilinski Bacal

Due to the site's proximity to the Panama Canal and an unused air strip, Panama Pacifico is an excellent location to build a hub for international trade, commerce, and industry.

James C. Dobbin

He ordered U.S. Navy Lieutenant Isaac Strain to command a U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition to map and survey the Darién Gap for a Panama Canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Krzysztof Baranowski

The course of the travel led among others through the Canary Islands, Caribbean, Panama Canal, Tahiti, Australia, Seychelles, Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Madden Dam

The dam and the reservoir behind it were both named for U.S. Congressman Martin B. Madden of Illinois, who was a chairman of the House appropriations committee during the period while the U.S. was constructing the Panama Canal.

MS Queen Elizabeth

The ship made several European cruises until she departed on her first world cruise, leaving Southampton on 5 January 2011 and calling at New York, Fort Lauderdale, Aruba and Limon before transiting the Panama Canal.

Naomi James

Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz of Poland was the first woman to sail around the world solo, completing her 401-day voyage (via the Panama Canal) on 21 April 1978, less than two months before James, starting and finishing in the Canary Islands.

Operation Plowshare

Proposed uses for nuclear explosives under Project Plowshare included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems.

Patton, Pennsylvania

Bricks made there were used in the construction of the Panama Canal and the pavers were used around the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla

With the assistance of American lobbyist and lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, Bunau-Varilla greatly influenced the United States' decision concerning the construction site for the famed Panama Canal.

Rafael Reyes

By 1904, Colombia was still hurting from the events of the civil Thousand Days' War and the loss of the Panama Canal.

Robin Lee Graham

After spending Christmas and New Year's Day in Cristobal in the Canal Zone, Return of Dove sailed through the Panama Canal with both Robin and Patti aboard (so Robin ended up not completing his entire journey alone) and reached Balboa on January 17, 1970.

Walther Linis

They started in France and sailed through the Suez Canal to Arabia where they unloaded oil and continued over the Pacific shoreline to San Diego in California and on into the Panama Canal to the Gulf island of Aruba, waterless island but they could get oil board and then took 12 trips between many U.S. cities in the east shore, the boat went several times to the port of Tampico in Mexico from 1957-58.