The Big Dig costs 5,000 lives...

On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower. American ingenuity and innovation had succeeded where, just a few years earlier, the French had failed disastrously. The story of the canal features a cast of colorful characters ranging from an indomitable President to visionary engineers to tens of thousands of workers from around the world, rigidly segregated by race. Using an extraordinary archive of photographs and footage, Interviews with canal workers and first-hand accounts of life in the Canal zone, director Stephen Ives and producer Amanda Pollak (New Orleans, Roads to Memphis) unravel the story of one of the world's most significant technological achievements...The Panama Canal: American Experience...8pm