The Panama Canal is truly a human project in the name of progress that suffered from a fair amount of overconfidence and ignorance.  Originally scheduled to be constructed over a period of six years and for less than 10 million dollars by the French Panama Canal Corporation, almost 40 years passed, over 30,000 men died and over one half a billion dollars were spent before the canal was completed.

Construction of the Panama Canal was ill-fated from the beginning.  After building the Suez Canal, French industrialist Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps reasoned that the Panama Canal could be mastered in a similar fashion.  However, de Lesseps never visited the actual location of the Panama Canal until the project was underway, and he vastly underestimated the difference between digging through a large sand pile and the jungle.  Although only 50 miles wide, the area surrounding the Panama Canal is a dense jungle with a rock foundation, receiving 130 inches of rain per year.  This moisture, combined with the equatorial sun, results in a steady steam bath and the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever.  Without most of the modern medicines we take for granted, a large portion of the crew died of disease shortly after arrival.

Ironically, an alternative and probably much better plan of creating a canal above sea level by damming two rivers was initially rejected by de Lesseps because he had successfully built the Suez Canal by digging to sea level.  After the Panama Canal Corporation went bankrupt and the United States began serious efforts to build the canal in the early part of the 20th Century, reason prevailed and the canal was constructed using a series of locks and dams that maintained the canal elevation above sea level.  The first ship passed through the canal in 1914 and the canal was officially opened by the United States on July 20, 1920.    

Lessons to be learned: Never assume the same solution will work for all projects, and always visit the job site.