CAMILLE BOHANNON

The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red
seas, was inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended
by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul
to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor
of Egypt to build a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of
Suez.

An international team of engineers drew up a construction
plan, and in 1856 the Suez Canal Company was formed and
granted the right to operate the canal for 99 years after
completion of the work.

Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was
done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced
laborers.

Empress Eugénie (1826 – 1920)

    
   
US Naval Academy Class of 1892.

The United States Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland,
with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as
the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics
and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.

The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in
1850, and a new curriculum went into effect, requiring midshipmen
to study at the academy for four years and to train aboard ships
each summer—the basic format that remains at the academy to
this day.

The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened with an unusual variation on the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony by
San Francisco mayor Angelo Rossi. A silver chain was
cut with a torch.
   

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological
and artistic achievement, opened to the public after five years
of construction.

On April 7, 1949, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South
Pacific opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in New
York City. The romantic musical about World War II, which
touches on controversial racial themes, went on to run for
almost five years, becoming one of the most popular musicals
of the 1950s.