The Suez Canal opens, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

For centuries, ships sailing between Europe and Asia had to travel around the southern tip of Africa, a long and dangerous voyage.

In 1854, the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps won permission from Egypt's ruler to build a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Work began in April 1859. Over ten years, tens of thousands of labourers, and later steam dredgers, dug a channel through the desert and a series of lakes.

The canal opened on 17 November 1869 with a grand ceremony at Port Said attended by royalty from across Europe. A procession of ships sailed its length to the Red Sea.

At first it was 164 km long and 8 m deep, with no locks, because the two seas lie at almost the same level. It cut the sea route from London to Mumbai by about 7,000 km.

The canal changed world trade. It has been widened and deepened many times, and a new parallel channel opened in 2015. Today it carries around a tenth of world seaborne trade.