The ancient Romans were skilled engineers and builders. As long ago as the first century AD, the Romans created impressively engineered tunnels to carry waste water and effluent away from their cities, thereby preventing epidemics. Roman sewage tunnels helped make Rome a socially harmonious place, according to historian Matthew Bunson, as the tunnels assured safe water for bathing and drinking.
During World War II, prisoners of war often tried to build tunnels to escape from their German captors. Historian John Hammond Moore recounts details of the famous "Great Escape" tunnel, as featured in the 1963 movie, starring Steve McQueen and set in Stalag Luft III in Sagan, now Zagan, Poland. Completed in 1944, the tunnel was 44 feet deep and 400 feet long, and needed a tremendous amount of furtive labor to dig it out. Seventy-six POWs escaped, but most of them were recaptured and shot.
Steam locomotives work best on fairly level ground. When the railway network expanded in the Victorian era, large railway construction programs expanded available routes. As part of the building process, tunnels were blasted through solid rock, where necessary, to ensure a continuation of flat terrain. British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel built several tunnels, the most famous of which is probably the 2-mile-long Box Tunnel between Bath and Chippenham. During construction, about 100 laborers were killed.
Tunnels under water include The Channel Tunnel, between England and France. Tunnels carrying water include New York's Delaware Aqueduct, the longest tunnel in the world. The Lincoln Tunnel is a road traffic tunnel serving about 42 million vehicles a year between Weehawken, New Jersey, and midtown Manhattan. An example of a natural tunnel is Virginia's Natural Tunnel in State Park. It was created over a million years ago when water bearing acid dissolved limestone and bedrock.