Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is born in Porbandar, a coastal town in the princely state of Kathiawar, western India.

After ten years of digging by tens of thousands of laborers, the Suez Canal opened, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas and reshaping global trade.

The 120-mile Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas, formally opened for shipping traffic, cutting the sea route between Europe and Asia by thousands of miles.