The Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan running beneath the Tsugaru Strait to link Honshu, the main island, with Hokkaido in the north. Work began in the early 1970s after a deadly typhoon sank several ferries, and the tunnel opened in March 1988. It is about fifty-four kilometers long, of which more than twenty are under the seabed, and its lowest point lies far below sea level. It was the longest railway tunnel in the world until the Gotthard Base Tunnel opened in 2016. Since 2016 it has carried the Hokkaido Shinkansen high-speed trains, as well as freight.
Before and after
- 19881988 becomes the warmest year on record
- 15 February 1988Death of Richard Feynman
- from 20 February 1988 to 16 May 1994First Nagorno-Karabakh War
- from 27 February 1988 to 1 March 1988Sumgait pogrom
- 13 March 1988Construction of Seikan Tunnel
- 5 May 1988Birth of Adele
- 23 June 1988Creation of Mathematica
- 23 June 1988James Hansen tells the US Senate that global warming has begun
- 3 July 1988Iran Air Flight 655 shootdown
More in Art, literature & culture
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- from 1960 to 1970The Beatles
- 1960Construction of Aswan Dam
- 1978Publication of Garfield
- from 24 September 2007 to 16 May 2019Premiere of The Big Bang Theory
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The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.