It's the evening of July 26, 1956, in Port Said on the north coast of Egypt.

An Egyptian army truck is parked in a side street close to the harbor.

Huddled in the back is a squad of Egyptian soldiers.

The officer leans down and adjusts a tiny radio set on the floor by their feet.

The soldiers listen as a man's voice booms through the device.

The charismatic speaker is the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

He's speaking before a crowd of thousands in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, but it's not just

Nassar's electrifying speech that holds the soldiers' attention.

The officer glances around at his men and reminds them of the code word they're listening

for, the name Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Ferdinand was the 19th century Frenchman who built the Suez Canal, the waterway in Egypt

that links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

When the president says Ferdinand's name, that's the soldier's signal to begin their

secretly planned operation.

So the men listen intently as Nassar works up the crowd with attacks on Western imperialism,

criticizing the attempts by countries like America and Britain to control the Arab world.

As Nasser begins talking about the Suez Canal, he then says the crucial words, Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Readying their weapons, the soldiers leap out of the back of the truck.

With the officer leading the way, they hurry across the street

and burst through the front doors of an office building.

The soldiers pass a startled doorman and dash up the stairs to the offices of the Suez Canal Company.

The men pushed through the door, and the officer in charge roars at the top of his voice

...