1 Dec 1990
Chunnel makes breakthrough Shortly after 11 a.m. on December 1, 1990, 132 feet below the English Channel, workers drill an opening the size of a car through a wall of rock. This was no ordinary hole–it connected the two ends of an underwater tunnel linking Great Britain with the European mainland for the first time in more than 8,000 years. The Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” was not a new idea. […]