Word: canale
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Panama was a province of Colombia when Theodore Roosevelt took up the idea of building a canal after a failed attempt by France. When the Colombian government rejected a new treaty allowing the U.S. to build a canal, Roosevelt became enraged. Soon after, a group of Panamanian separatist leaders declared a revolution. That same day, U.S. gunboats appeared off the coast to keep Colombia from reclaiming its territory. Roosevelt vigorously denied that the U.S. had fomented the revolution but defended his actions in characteristic terms: "To have acted otherwise ... would have been betrayal of the interests of the United States...
...rain forests and squalid towns of Panama were rife with diseases like malaria and yellow fever. As many as 20,000 people died during the French effort to build a canal in the late 1800s. But as a result of his work in Cuba after the Spanish-American War, a tireless American doctor named William Gorgas came to believe strongly in the new discovery that a specific mosquito spread yellow fever. Overcoming doubters, he began a widespread campaign of mosquito eradication and sanitation improvements. The death rate among canal workers plummeted...
Initially, Congress created a seven-person commission to oversee construction. After the first chief engineer broke down under the stress of the job, Roosevelt sidestepped the panel and gave total power to one man, Army Colonel George Goethals. As absolute ruler of the Canal Zone, Goethals oversaw every detail, from digging and building to resolving personal disputes among workers...
...long and 110 ft. wide, the locks were built to handle the largest ships then planned. Even though many modern ships are too big (the Titanic would have fit; today's Queen Mary 2 doesn't), the canal handled more than 14,000 transits in 2005, accounting for about 5% of world trade. How a lock works...
...Lake ?Water from Miraflores Lake enters first lock through culvert system, elevating ship to level of second lock ?Ship pulls into second lock; gates close behind it ?Water from MirafloresLake enters second lock, elevating ship to lake level ?Ship moves into Miraflores Lake, proceeds through canal to next locks