Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on March 18 formally opened the world's longest suspension bridge at Çanakkale, over the entrance to the Dardanelles Straits between the Aegean and Marmara seas.

Expected to carry 45,000 vehicles a day, the 1915Çanakkale Bridge's 2,023-meter-main span beats the 1,992 meters of Japan's Akashi Kaikyo Bridge. Its two 318-m-tall towers are also record-breakers.

The design/build joint venture of Daelim, Limak, SK and Yapi Merkezi built the crossing in approximately five years with designs led by Denmark's COWI A/S.

Read more here about the construction of the record setting project and here about the civil engineer who first envisioned building it decades ago.