Oasis Presents: The Creation of the Panama Canal

In one of the most ambitious engineering projects in history, in the early 1900s the United States constructed an aquatic path connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans across the newly created nation of Panama. Professor Blaine Davies recently visited the Panama Canal, and he explains how in spite of disease, politics and daunting civil engineering obstacles, the canal was conceived, engineered and opened for ocean-to-ocean transit.  To do it, the Americans had to conquer disease, move massive amounts of earth, build an ingenious system of locks and even create an enormous lake.