The story of the Suez Canal is a story of determination.
It started as a simple idea, turned into a grand dream, and finally became a reality.
The man behind this dream was a French diplomat named Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Born in France in 1805, Ferdinand was a bright, young man with a promising future.
His father was a diplomat who worked in many countries around the world.
Ferdinand studied to become a diplomat like his father,
and in 1832 he was sent to Egypt to take a diplomatic job as the French consul at Alexandria.
Upon his arrival in the ancient city, however, Ferdinand had to stay in a hospital because someone from his ship had fallen sick.
While he and others from the ship waited to learn if they were sick too, Ferdinand grew restless and picked up a book to read.
The book was a report written by a French engineer, and reading it inspired a dream that Ferdinand pursued for the rest of his life.
The report was about building a waterway between the Mediterranean and Red seas.
At that time ships sailing between Europe and Asia had to travel around the entire continent of Africa.
If built, this new route would greatly shorten the trip between Europe and the Far East.
The report stated that building a canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea was impossible because of the different water levels of the two seas.
But this conclusion did not discourage Ferdinand.
Instead, as soon as the young consul was released from the hospital,
he began researching the narrow piece of land, called the Isthmus of Suez, that separated the two seas.
Ferdinand discovered that the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt
had built waterways to connect the Nile River to the Red Sea to have access to the rich copper mines and spice lands of East Africa.
Unfortunately, this was thousands of years in the past, and those waterways were long lost.
But now that he knew a similar canal had once been built, Ferdinand was more determined than ever to pursue his goal.
Ferdinand de Lesseps' duties as the French consul were demanding.
He traveled frequently between Alexandria and Cairo, and had little time for his beloved Suez Canal project.
It was also difficult to get the ruler of Egypt to support his plans,
even though Ferdinand was teaching French and horseback riding to the ruler's grandson.
Still Ferdinand did not give up. He continued to study the height of the land and the water levels along possible routes for the canal.
In 1837 Ferdinand was transferred from Egypt back to Europe to take up other diplomatic posts.
He was sad to leave, and it was twenty years before he saw his beloved Egypt again.
During those years, as his diplomatic responsibilities increased, his dream of the canal began to fade.
In 1849 Ferdinand retired and went to live in a villa on the outskirts of Paris.
It seemed to him that his great dream belonged to a part of his life that was over, but things were about to change.
One morning in 1854, Ferdinand was reading the newspaper when a headline caught his eye.
He read that Abbas Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, was dead and that Said Pasha had inherited the position.
Said Pasha was the boy Ferdinand had taught back in Alexandria.
The young prince was now a grown man who remembered the retired French consul fondly.
Ferdinand knew that the new ruler of Egypt would support him in building the canal.
His dream was coming to life once again.
When Said invited Ferdinand to come to Egypt to celebrate his new position, Ferdinand promptly agreed.
In the time since Ferdinand's first posting to Egypt,
the reports about the different water levels of the Mediterranean and Red seas had been proved wrong.
Now the only obstacle was finding the money to build the canal.
Almost everyone thought Ferdinand was out of his mind to dig a canal in the desert, and he had a hard time finding financial supporters.
But his diplomatic charm, optimism, and belief in the project prevailed.
Ferdinand traveled between Europe and Egypt, gathering support for his project.
It took him five years, but he was able to find supporters in France and Egypt who bought shares in his newly-formed Suez Canal Company.
In 1859 he finally had enough funds to start digging; construction began in April of that year.
Once construction started, it took ten years of hard labor to complete the canal.
Said Pasha supplied Ferdinand with the many laborers he needed.
A total of one and a half million laborers worked on the canal,
mostly by hand, digging in the sandy soil in extremely hot weather with almost no machinery to aid them.
Finally, after much hardship and the death of many laborers, the Suez Canal was completed in 1869.
The day the Suez Canal officially opened, there was a grand celebration.
Important people from all over the world came to Egypt, including Empress Eugenie of France.
It had taken Ferdinand over forty years of hard work, but his dream had been realized.
Europe and the Far East were finally connected.
The Suez Canal, one of the longest in the world, is 166 kilometers long, 11 meters deep, and 60 meters wide.
It can accommodate any ship except the largest supertankers.
Each year thousands of ships from almost every country in the world travel through the canal.
In fact, 14 percent of all the goods traded worldwide pass through this waterway.
Ferdinand's dream to connect the world took him on a long and difficult journey, but in the end, the determined French diplomat succeeded.