Channel tunnel

The English Channel, known to the French as La Manche (the Sleeve), is a narrow strip of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from the rest of Europe. Channel Tunnel or Eurotunnel Rail tunnel that runs beneath the English Channel between Folkestone England and Sangatte (near Calais), France.

The earliest recorded proposal was by a French engineer named Nicolas Desmaret dating from 1751. About fifty years later Albert Mathieu Favier suggested a horse drawn railroad under the Channel; his scheme included an artificial island that would serve as a staging post.

In 1850 French mining engineer, Aimé Thomé de Gamond proposed to Napoleon a railroad tunnel between Folkstone in the southern English country of Kent and Cap Griz-Nez on the French Coast.

In 1875 a proposal from a British engineer, Peter Barlow to build a floating steel tube across the Channel led to concessions being granted by both the French and British parliaments, although insufficient funds meant that the project did not proceed.

In the mid 1870s, Channel Tunnel companies ware formed and boring began from France and British sides of the channel in 1878. However, British government forced abandonment of the project after public opinion, fearing invasion by the French, turned against the tunnel.

In 1930-40 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the French government supported the digging of a tunnel. Years of surveys and research yielded a scheme the coast of which would be divided equally between Britain and France, and work began on both sides of the Channel in 1974.

In the United Kingdom, an access tunnel was made between the upper and lower sites at Shakespeare Cliff near Dover, and a rail access adit was bored from the lower site down to the level of the future rail tunnels.

The Channel was officially opened on 10 December 1993, and Eurotunnel commenced its commercial operations six months later.
Channel tunnel

The Viking people

From the eight century to the eleventh, Scandinavians, mostly Danes and Norwegians, figure prominently in the historians of Western Europe as raiders, conquerors and colonists.

They came from what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden nations that only took shape later during the medieval period. They are located in the northern European region known as Scandinavian which occupies two peninsulas and hundreds of islands.

Men and women from west Scandinavia emigrated to settle, not only in the parts of the British Isles that were then under Scandinavian control, but also in the Faeroes and Iceland, Atlantic islands that previously been uninhabited.

During that time, they were one of the most dynamic and feared peoples in Europe. They sailed from their own countries in search of new lands to conquer and to settle.

Their raids across Europe gave them a reputation as violent warriors.

The people these Scandinavians encountered gave them a variety of names. To the Anglo-Saxon; the Vikings were ‘pagans’, ‘Danes’ or ‘Northmen’. Frankish sources too refer to them as Northmen or Normans; while German chronicles describe them as Ashmen.

Spanish Muslim sources refer to them as al-Madjus; Slavic sources as Rus and Byzantine sources as Rhos.

In the ninth century it was only English who occasionally, called the invaders Vikings, a Scandinavian word that now has a wider meaning and is used to describe many aspects of Scandinavia society in what is commonly called the Age of the Vikings.

The fighting skill of the Vikings was legendary across Europe. During the Age of Vikings, the nations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden were molded out of small chieftains and principalities and became Christian realms.

Iceland, Greenland and a section of North America were colonized by Norsemen who also raid and settled in parts of the British Isles and northwestern mainland Europe. Viking traders and dynasts loomed large on Russian soil.

They arrived on the British coasts in 793 and looted the places they attacked and took the booty home. Eventually the raids turned into an invasion and in 865 a large Viking army swept through England.
The Viking people