Over 15 million people cross the twenty-five-mile-wide English Channel every year. Some of these people go across in airplanes and some by ferry boat. These days, many others drive or take the train through the"Chunnel," the tunnel that connects England and France. The idea of building a tunnel goes back to the nineteenth century, but it only became a serious possibility late in the twentieth century. The reasons for this were partly technical and partly political. Until recently, most English people wanted England to remain separate. They did not want to