what is the panama canal? when was it built?

The Panama Canal is a large man‑made waterway in Central America that connects the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean, allowing ships to avoid sailing all the way around South America. It was built mainly between 1904 and 1914, and the canal officially opened to commercial traffic on August 15, 1914.

What the Panama Canal is

• A lock-based canal running across the Isthmus of Panama, about 65 km (40 miles) long from shoreline to shoreline.

• It uses a system of locks to lift ships up to Gatun Lake and then lower them back to sea level, instead of being a flat “sea-level” channel.

• It is considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century and a critical shortcut for global trade, saving thousands of kilometers of travel compared to rounding Cape Horn at South America’s southern tip.

When and how it was built

• A French effort started construction in 1881 but collapsed by 1889 due to disease, financing problems, and engineering challenges.

• The United States took over in 1904 under a treaty with the new Republic of Panama and redesigned the project as a lock canal, dramatically improving sanitation to fight yellow fever and malaria.

• Construction was completed in 1914; the first official commercial transit was by the ship SS Ancon on August 15, 1914, marking the canal’s opening to world shipping.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.