Ferdinand De Lesseps
From BiblePortal Wikipedia
Ferdinand De Lesseps [1]
French diplomatist, born at Versailles; conceived the scheme of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean in 1854, and saw it finished as the Suez Canal in 1869; projected a similar scheme for a canal at Panama, but it ended in failure, disgrace, and ruin to the projectors as well as others (1805-1894).