August 15 · This Day in America
The cargo and passenger ship Ancon slides from the Atlantic into the Pacific, and a dream four centuries old comes true. American engineers had moved more than two hundred million cubic yards of earth, tamed the Chagres River, raised ships eighty-five feet over a mountain spine in vast concrete locks, and beaten back the yellow fever and malaria that had killed thousands and defeated the French before them. The canal cut the sea voyage from New York to San Francisco from roughly 14,000 miles to under 6,000. It was, at the time, the largest engineering project the United States had ever attempted, and it worked. The world's oceans were stitched together by gates of steel and water that still swing open today. On its opening day, the war that would consume Europe was two weeks old. Almost no one noticed the canal. History had room for both.
Source: www.govinfo.gov
Also on this day · 1969
The gates open on Max Yasgur's dairy farm near Bethel, New York, and the crowd does not stop coming — more than 400,000 by the end. Three days of mud, rain, music, and a strange, improbable peace. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who, Sly and the Family Stone. Promoters lost the money and gained the myth. For one weekend a small farm became the largest gathering of a generation, and somehow nobody fought.
Source: www.history.com