Victorian Remote Control

On this date 101 years ago, President Wilson completed the Panama Canal while sitting in his office. He neither flew nor took a car, which are the two alternatives shown above. Rather, he used what author Tom Standage has called the Victorian Internet, also known as the telegraph, to detonate the last remaining dike at Gamboa. Removing those last few feet of dirt shortened a New York-to-San Francisco journey by 7,872 miles -- nearly the diameter of the entire planet.