The spreading centre shifted west of the hot spot about 80 million years ago, ending construction of the Rio Grande Rise but continuing to build the Walvis Ridge.
By any standards, last week's decision by Hitachi to end construction of its £20bn nuclear power plant at Wylfa in Wales was a major blow to Britain's prospects of creating an effective energy policy for the 21st century.
But ending construction and dealing with the fact that settler numbers have swollen to some 300,000 since the 1967 conquest of the West Bank, plus another 200,000 in East Jerusalem, are among the indispensable steps towards reaching a peace deal.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, came out fighting against American pressure to end construction of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem just hours before a potentially difficult meeting today with Barack Obama.
"This has to stop," he said of the administration's policy of publicly pressuring Israel to end construction in Jerusalem.
The chaos, the noise, the lights, the millions of options, the diversity, the old and decrepit, the modern and redone, the never ending construction.
These plans were soon abandoned as Allied ground forces advanced towards Mimoyecques, and on 30 July the Organisation Todt engineers were ordered to end construction work.
The stock market crash of 1929 ended all construction.
By this time the threat from German cruisers and raiders had ended, so construction proceeded slowly.
The next day, all Spruce Production Division logging ended, most construction projects were stopped, and sawmill operations were curtailed.
