One of the greatest works of civil engineering art of the last 30 years

https://i.redd.it/70pekfunvooe1.jpeg

by Wonderful-Excuse4922

25 comments

  4. I was at my grandparents watching this live on Saturday morning tv. I didn’t realise how monumental it was at the time

  6. It’d be good to get a side by side photo of these 2 to see how they great each other now…like old friends reuniting

  8. I work in the tunnelling industry with a few guys who worked on the channel tunnel, these guys were built differently.

  9. This was not only a technical milestone, but also a political one. A great symbol of a united Europe.

    How times have changed…

  11. I’ve never seen this photo before.

    I was a child when people walked across the tunnel for the first time and it was all over the news. Made it more exciting to go through the tunnel for the first time ourselves (not walking obviously).

  14. The political and historical ramifications of the Chunnel should not be overlooked. How many times over the centuries were the UK and the French at each others throats, how many wars did they wage against each other. It’s important to recognize how much stronger we are together than separate.

  21. Dear reader, dear history or engineering fan, dear French or Brit, dear Channel Tunnel enthusiast,

    I implore you to read [this Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_of_Eupalinos) about the Tunnel of Eupalinos.

    The engineering principles used to construct the 1km Eupalinos tunnel were the same as the channel tunnel, just the scale was much smaller. It was dug in Samos island in order to carry an aquaduct through a mountain (easy to guard against poison sabotage) rather than around (hard). Construction started about 2600 years ago, and took about 8 years. They didn’t have gps, lasers or other direction/navigation systems back then, which makes it very impressive. It’s pretty hard to dig from two opposite sides and correctly meet in the middle. Just the pythagorean theorem, and pickaxes. (Pythagoras was from Samos btw! But Eupalinos was from Megara)

    I tear up a bit internally whenever I read about it, and reading about the channel tunnel is like being proud of how far your child has come. That’s a few more tears, and a lump in the throat.

    None of these feats of engineering are possible with the isolationism or anti-intellectualism that plagues us today, I hope that is your takeaway from this read.

    I also hope, if there’s an afterlife, that Mr. Mathieu and Mr. Eupalinos are having wine together.

  22. Another fun fact, St Barbara is the patron saint of tunneling and most tunnellers have a small shrine to her that the workers pass by for her to protect them from harm.

    [Here is the one for the French side of the channel tunnel](https://i.imgur.com/Q537KZV.jpeg)

  23. How funny it could’ve been if the french dude showed up with a belgian flag.

    Missed opportunity.

  24. My parents invested in that, not for the money but for the symbol. They lost their money but they still believed it was worth it. They never had the opportunity to use it. Then…Brexit. I’m do sad for them. 

  25. Sure, it’s a great engineering achievement, but I’m not sure why you felt the need to mention the last 30 years since it was opened in 1994 and this photo is from 1990. 

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