Word: isthmus
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...across Central America would have eliminated the 7,000-mile journey around Cape Horn for ships navigating between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. At the time, most U.S. engineers favored a canal at sunny Nicaragua. The crossing there would have been 131 miles longer than at the 50-mile Isthmus of Panama. But almost all of the extra miles would have required no digging, since a Nicaraguan canal would feed into Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River...
...press release stating that the province of Panama might secede from Colombia, in which case the U.S. would recognize Panama as an independent nation and conclude a treaty with the new state. This scheme seemed to violate an 1846 U.S. agreement to guarantee the sovereignty of Colombia in the isthmus. Violation or not, the plot was shortly put into effect...
...Path Between the Seas looks back with frank admiration on the men and machines that toiled 44 years to join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the Isthmus of Panama. Historian David McCullough, 44, author of The Johnstown Flood and The Great Bridge, skirts such contemporary controversies as U.S. control over the Canal Zone. There is matter enough for him in history. The isthmus belonged to Colombia until 1903, when the U.S., under Teddy Roosevelt, encouraged a local revolt and sent American warships to block the landing of Colombian troops. Congressional doves objected to the gunboat diplomacy, but they were...
...isthmus became known as "De Lesseps' graveyard." A bloc in the U.S. Senate urged a new canal site in Nicaragua-a longer but healthier route. The Panama lobby won out, partly on the argument that Nicaragua had too many active volcanoes. With the payment of $10 million to Panama and $40 million to the defunct French company, the U.S. entered into the most expensive peacetime undertaking in its 128-year history. The final bill was $352 million...
...narrow Panama isthmus has become a potentially explosive issue between the U.S. and its neighbors to the south. Almost every Latin American nation supports Panama's demand for control of the canal. The U.S. has gradually recognized that the canal is a colonial acquisition of another age and has conceded the principle of sovereignty. During the life of the treaty, the U.S. and Panama would share control of the canal. At the expiration of the treaty, around the year 2000, Panama would take over. Within three years of signing the treaty, Panama would also acquire legal jurisdiction over...