Industrial Age · Middle East · Technology

1869

Suez Canal Opens

November 17, 1869

Ferdinand de Lesseps, an ex-diplomat with a genius for hype, opened the 120-mile waterway that joined the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Empress Eugenie's yacht led a procession of ships through. London to Bombay had just been shortened by five thousand miles, and the global economy had been quietly rewired around the isthmus of Suez.

More from 1869 Industrial Age

In context

Also in 1869 (5 other events on record)

Mendeleev's Periodic Table · Europe · Science
Transcontinental Railroad Completed · North America · Technology
Vatican I Opens · Europe · Religion
Tolstoy's War and Peace · Europe · Culture
Black Friday Gold Panic · North America · Disaster

Before and after in Middle East

Before: 1844: Bahai Faith Begins
After: November 25, 1875: Britain Buys Suez Shares

Before and after in Technology

Before: 1866: Nobel's Dynamite
After: May 7, 1873: Remington Typewriter

Era

Industrial Age (1801–1900), one of 513 events from that era on Saeculum.

Sources

Wikipedia: Suez Canal