The President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, opened the Panama Canal by detonating the latest dynamite load. From Washington, he vibrated the explosive with a telegraph signal sent from the White House. The Republic of Panama definitively granted the rights of the canal linking the Pacific with the Atlantic to the United States, as well as eight kilometres on each side, for $10 million and $250,000 annually. The United States forced 40,000 Panamanians to leave their homes, destroying entire peoples and cultures.