The Zuiderzee Works were a massive hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the 20th century. They were built to protect land from flooding and to reclaim land in extensive polders, for farming and housing. Original plans for the works date back to the 17th century, but it was not until 1913, when Cornelis Lely became minister of transport, that official planning started. The single biggest structure in the project was a 32 km long dam, the Afsluitdijk, protecting the Dutch from the North Sea. But to test the waters the small Amsteldiepdijk was built first, construction of which lasted four years and proved to be a valuable learning experience for the much larger Afsluitdijk. When the Afsluitdijk was finished in 1932, the Zuiderzee was completely dammed off and from then on would be called lake IJsselmeer. The inflation-adjusted cost of the dam would be the current equivalent of $710 million.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee_Works

Today's selected anniversaries:

1700 At the Battle of Narva King Charles XII of Sweden defeated the army of Tsar Peter the Great. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Narva)

1789 New Jersey became the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights)

1969 Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer published explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre) 1999 The People's Republic of China launched its first Shenzhou spacecraft. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_spacecraft)

Wikiquote of the day:

"Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have." ~ Oprah Winfrey (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey)