Panama Canal / Suez Canal / D-Day artificial harbors

S.L.A. Marshall's Hoover Medal address invoked these as the engineering achievements that justified the medal's award to Eisenhower. Tom cites the 72-million-ton earthmoving figure for Panama as concrete scale.

Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall — this is not George Marshall of the Marshall Plan — in his eloquent address at the giving of the Hoover Medal, said: to dig the Panama Canal and free it of rock slides over many years required the movement of seventy-two million tons of earth. Not pounds — seventy-two million tons. That's a lot of rock. The Suez Canal, like that. The United Kingdom moved even more, transported across oceans in the face of enemy peril, to artificial harbors — this is for D-Day. Omaha Beach. They built a whole docking system and moved it across the English Channel for D-Day. When the engineers left that night they felt pride in the achievements of their profession. Marshall did go to MIT but then he transferred over to West Point — a military engineer.