Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte () de Lesseps, GCSI (19 November 1805 – 7 December 1894) was the French developer of the Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas in 1869.  He also tried to build a Panama Canal during the 1880s, but malaria and yellow fever was so bad that he gave up and the Panama Canal Company went bankrupt.  A different canal was later built by the United States and completed in 1914.