The Channel Tunnel breakthrough
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thirty years on from the opening of the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, we look at the moment the two halves of the tunnel were connected in 1990.
Graham Fagg was the man who made the breakthrough, and the first person to cross by land between the two countries in 8,000 years.
In 2010, he told Lucy Williamson about the festivities of that day.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.
(Photo: The moment of breakthrough Graham Fagg greets Frenchman Philippe Cozette. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Helena Bonkarter and this is history's secret heroes. |
| 0:07.0 | In this series we'll hear stories of daring secret missions and |
| 0:15.0 | re- |
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| 0:18.0 | and Riemont the escape artist |
| 0:21.0 | interned in a German camp. |
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| 0:27.8 | The new series of history's secret heroes. |
| 0:30.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.0 | Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. It's 30 years since the Channel Tunnel |
| 0:45.7 | linking England and France was opened in 1994. We're taking you back four years |
| 0:52.0 | earlier to the moment the two halves of the tunnel |
| 0:55.0 | were finally connected. In 2010, Lucy Williamson spoke to the man who made the |
| 1:00.9 | breakthrough. It's December 1st, 1990, and deep beneath the English Channel, tunnel worker Graham Fag |
| 1:08.2 | is about to make history. |
| 1:10.2 | We've driven a small tunnel through the side of the tunnel and the French had come through partly from their side and there was maybe, I don't know, maybe half a meter of rock left chalk left to be taken out. |
| 1:27.0 | Graham and his French counterpart, Philippe Cosette, are about to open the first land connection between their two countries since the |
| 1:35.2 | last Ice Age 8,000 years ago. |
| 1:38.6 | What we had to do was to break this out using air hammers or jiggers as we call them to make the passageway through |
| 1:46.1 | from France to the UK. |
| 1:48.1 | And that's the kind of sort of pneumatic drill is it? |
| 1:51.2 | That's it, that's it. |
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