On This Day - May 6th 1994
The Channel Tunnel is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand.
The Channel tunnel is a rail tunnel, 50 kilometres in length, of which 39 km lie beneath the English Channel at the Straits of Dover, connecting Cheriton in Kent, England and Coquelles near Calais in northern France. A journey through the tunnel lasts about 20 minutes. The concept of such a tunnel linking Britain and France had been under discussion for centuries, but it was only seriously realised in 1957 when le Tunnel sous la Manche Study Group was formed. Following the group's report in 1960, the project to construct the Tunnel was launched in 1973, but financial problems in 1975 halted progress beyond a 250m test tunnel.
In 1984, a joint United Kingdom and French government request for proposals to build a privately funded link brought forth four submissions, one of which closely resembled the 1973 route. The Fixed Link Treaty was signed by the British and French governments on 12 February 1986, and ratified in 1987. It took 15,000 workers over seven years to dig the tunnel, with tunnelling operations carried out simultaneously from both ends. On 1 December 1990, workers bored through the final wall of rock to join the two halves of the Channel Tunnel.
The Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel as it is sometimes known, was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand on 6 May 1994, in a ceremony held in Calais. The American Society of Civil Engineers has declared the tunnel to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.