A closer look
Digging the massive underground Channel Tunnel between England and France produced such an unfathomable amount of excavated chalk and dirt that the British literally used their half of the debris to build a completely new artificial landmass. This newly created territory, cleverly named Samphire Hoe, was seeded with local vegetation and transformed into a lovely public park where tourists can enjoy a pleasant afternoon stroll on top of millions of tons of pulverized subterranean garbage. It is the ultimate flex of civil engineering that in the process of constructing an immensely complicated underwater rail transport system, the United Kingdom casually decided to just physically expand its sovereign borders. Instead of finding an eco-friendly way to dispose of the ancient seabed, they basically just swept the entire mess under the rug until a new park emerged. Nothing screams British ingenuity quite like digging a thirty-mile hole to Europe and casually turning the resulting rubble into a picnic spot
