The Channel Tunnel linking Britain and France opens

On May 6, 1994, Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand presided over the official inauguration of the Channel Tunnel, a rail link running beneath the English Channel between Folkestone, England, and Coquelles, France.

The ceremony staged a neat bit of symbolism: the two heads of state boarded trains from opposite countries and met in the middle. The tunnel stretches about 31 miles, of which some 23 miles lie under water — making it the world’s longest undersea tunnel section — at an average of roughly 150 feet below the seabed.

Decades of failed proposals had floated the idea since the 1800s, often sunk by British fears of invasion. The finished “Chunnel” finally connected Britain to mainland Europe by land for the first time since rising seas severed the two after the last Ice Age — a triumph of engineering over both geology and history.