Ten World Engineering Marvels-- Part 3: The Chunnel, Railroad and Liberty

6.  CHANNEL TUNNEL

Opened in 1994 after six years of construction connecting Great Britain with the rest of Europe.  Known as the "Chunnel"  Thirty-one miles long.  Since they built it from both ends don't you know they were kind of hoping they'd come together at the same spot.

7.  TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD

Work on it began even as the Civil War was being fought.  Went eastward from Sacramento, California and west from Omaha, Nebraska.  Completed with the Golden Spike in 1869.

Cross-country travel in the United States  was cut from months to under a week.

8.  STATUE OF LIBERTY

A symbol of friendship between France and the United States.  It was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.

--CootTun

Ten World Engineering Marvels-- Part 1: Panama Canal and Golden Gate Bridge

From the History.com site by Christopher Klein.

These remarkable feats of design and construction transformed the ways that people travel, communicate and live.

For thousands of years, mankind has engineered some remarkable structures such as the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China.  More recently, engineers have undertaken massive  transportation and communications projects  that have pushed the boundaries of human ingenuity.

I am just listing them and giving one or two facts about each.  The site has pictures and a lot more.

Here is a list of ten of them:

1.  PANAMA CANAL

52 miles long and opened in 1914

2.  GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

1,7 miles long (was the longest suspension bridge for  27 years)  Opened in 1937.  It's been wiped out in more than a few disaster movies so don't drive on it when they are shooting a movie about San Francisco.

--Cooter

Looking Back to 1916: Building An Electrical Building in Springfield, Illinois

From the March 30, 2016, MidWeek "Looking Back."

1916, 100 Years Ago.

"Winfield Divine, formerly of Sycamore, has been employed to take charge of a large contract, the erection of an electrical building in Springfield, Illinois, for William McAlpine, contractor, of Dixon, formerly of Sycamore who erected the DeKalb County court house."

An Electrifying Performance.  --Cooter

Chicago Neede a Lift-- Part 2: Ellis Chesbrough

Steven Johnson, host of the series said, "What we wanted with this episode (Clean) was to tell the stories basically of how we came to have things like clean drinking water that doesn't kill us with cholera or typhoid."

Chicago grew from tiny settlement to huge metropolis almost immediately with no infrastructure.  It was "just this kind of muddy, mucky, overcrowded, incredibly smelly and disease-ridden place."  All this occurred from the 1850s to 1970s.

There was no natural drainage because of its flatness.  Even when the need to build sewers became much apparent, there was no where to build it.  Most city have a natural flow down to a river, lake or sea which it is located by.  Even with it being next to Lake Michigan, the flatness prevented that.

"And so this guy, Ellis Chesbrough, has this crazy but ultimately brilliant idea that you could actually just lift the entire city up and create an artificial flow by raising downtown Chicago by about ten feet.  So, using thousands of guys with jack screws, he lifts up these buildings.  They fill the roads with landfill, build sewers down the middle of the road, attach buildings to that."

--DaCoot

Chicago Needed a Lift-- Part 1: Too Low? Raise It!

From the October 15, 2014, Chicago Tribune "In order to get clean Chicago Needed a lift" by Steve Johnson.

"Chicago was the first American city to have a modern sewer system, and because it is so flat, it also had one of the hardest obstacles to achieving that.

"The story of, essentially, the jacking up of downtown Chicago to allow the waste system to be constructed underneath us the start of 'How We Hot to Now,' an engaging new six-part PBS series about ideas and achievements that shaped the modern world."

This episode is called "Clean,"  It goes from the man named Ellis Chesbrough, the city engineer who determined to use railroad jacks to raise the city and goes to Chicago's newest thing, the ongoing Deep Tunnel stormwater management project.

--Cooter