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The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States, Canada

and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch. Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting,

fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling, wonderful and tragic stories

of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders, environment and geography. I invite you

to come along for the ride. Welcome to the History Unplugged podcast. The unscripted show that

celebrates unsung heroes, myth busts historical lies and rediscoveres the forgotten stories that

changed our world. I'm your host, Scott Rank.

Hi everyone, welcome to an in-between episode where we answer any question that you have about

history. Rachel B asks this, tell me about the magic of the English channel and how it has so

much power to repel people from the continent. America is often said to have two oceans as its

best defense, but England seems to be amazingly protected by a tiny stretch of water. How?

That is really interesting because in one sense, the English channel is easy to cross. It's

20-some miles long. You can swim across it. You can build a tunnel underneath it for cars.

Human habitation there is practically as old as it is across the rest of Europe. So primitive

tribes and groups of people didn't have much difficulty building a vessel, building basically a canoe,

crossing it, settling it, trading from there back to the mainland continent. So the question is,

if it's so easy to get to, then why did it seem like the English channel was able to provide this

...