Working with explosives was dangerous business. It required drilling a hole and placing either black powder or liquid nitroglycerin in the opening and lighting a fuse. Though more dangerous than black powder, Howden’s nitroglycerin enabled construction crews to rapidly advance the scale of their work.

The Erie Canal. What was the only job more dangerous than lighting the fuse? Going back to relight it.

The wrong proportions can be lethal. There’s only one job that’s more dangerous than lighting the fuse. Going back to relight it.

How did the canal change the U.S.? They wanted to build it for transporting goods and making more money. It changed the U.S. by increasing trading productivity, increasing money, and increasing farm land. It made the U.S. like 3 times richer and the word, “millionaire” was invented.

The California Gold Rush was a major factor in expansion west of the Mississippi. That westward expansion was greatly aided by the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, and passage of the Homestead Act in 1862.

Interest in a U.S.-led canal effort picked up as soon as France abandoned the project. Initially, the Panama site was politically unfavorable in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including the taint of the failed French efforts and the Colombian government’s unfriendly attitude towards the U.S. continuing the project.

The reason was that a large swath of American public opinion opposed the Panama Canal treaties, but their motivation was a defensive American nationalism, not American national defense.

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After the United States, many other nations quickly recognized the independent republic, though Colombia refused to do so until 1909, after receiving a $500,000 concession from Panama to cover its share of the debts it owed at independence….Separation of Panama from Colombia.

The two main current competitors of the Panama Canal are the US intermodal system and the Suez Canal. The main ports and merchandise distribution centers in these routes are investing in capacity, location, and maritime and land infrastructure to serve post-Panamax container ships and their larger cargo volumes.