1 dicembre 1990. Il britannico Graham Fagg e il francese Philippe Cozette sfondano il tunnel di servizio del tunnel sotto la Manica, segnando una pietra miliare in uno dei più grandi progetti di ingegneria d’Europa. Si sono scambiati le bandiere, gli inglesi hanno inviato un Paddington Bear e i francesi hanno risposto con champagne.

The Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” links Folkestone, England, with Coquelles, France, and is the world’s longest undersea tunnel at 50.45 km (31.3 mi). Proposed for well over a century, construction finally began in 1988. On 1 December 1990, British and French workers achieved a historic breakthrough in the service tunnel, symbolically meeting under the Channel. The project, completed in May 1994, comprises two rail tunnels and a central service tunnel, carved using massive tunnelling machines, and remains a landmark of European engineering and cooperation.

The head of the tunneling machine called Virginie is exposed on a roundabout. Those machines are massive and that’s only the head [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Tunnelier_de_Coquelles_en_2013_06.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Tunnelier_de_Coquelles_en_2013_06.jpg)