Word: tunneling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their unceasing attempts to escape to freedom, East Berliners have often taken the underground route. But last week the world learned of the biggest, most elaborate tunnel yet built beneath the hated Wall. Through it. a record 59 refugees reached the West. The 413-ft. tunnel was dug in 18 weeks by two dozen German and foreign college students who began the job last May in a cellar in the working- class district of Wedding...
Progressive Songs. Sagging earth above the tunnel caused a break in a water line, but West Berlin firemen came to the rescue with a pump to drain the tunnel. A second flooding occurred at the 300-ft. mark, well inside East Berlin, when a water pipe burst near the tunnel. Fortunately, the East German repairmen who fixed the pipe did not notice the excavation below. As digging was resumed, the molelike students could hear the Communist loudspeakers on the Wall above them blaring out "progressive workers' " songs...
...sheer luck, the tunnel came out in an abandoned cellar in East Berlin. Not knowing what to expect, the first student to crawl out carried a submachine gun. The usual manner of contacting prospective escapees was practiced: the student-diggers drew up a list of friends in East Berlin and then someone with a West German or foreign passport went legally through the Wall, looked up the people on the list and verbally gave the necessary instructions...
...Runners-up: Britain's Mersey Tunnel joining Liverpool and Birkenhead (1934), Japan's Kan-mon Tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Kyushu (1958), both slightly over two miles long...
European travelers and businessmen should be happy too. The $50 million Mont Blanc tunnel will represent a big advance in European transport when it is opened to traffic early in 1964. The 23-ft., two-lane roadway will chop 125 mountainous miles from the Paris-Rome drive, open a route usable even when Alpine snow is deepest; Geneva and Turin. 197 miles apart by road in the summer and 491 miles apart in the winter, will be separated by 168 miles all year long when the tunnel is opened...