Discover the Top 11 Fascinating Fun Facts About the Suez Canal That Will Amaze You!

1. Traffic Jam at Suez Canal

The Suez Canal isn't just a one-way street for ships: sometimes, it's more like a chaotic nautical traffic jam with vessels bumping bumpers and drivers honking their foghorns in frustration. In the midst of the hustle, one particularly unruly participant, the Ever Given, thought it'd be fun to play a game of "red light, green light" in March 2021: causing a six-day halt on this vital trade route, blocking a whopping US$9.6 billion worth of trade, and prompting the Egyptian government to consider widening their slippery ship highway for the modern era of titanic transporters.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

2. Busy Oil Highway

Whoever said "slow and steady wins the race" clearly never had to navigate in a jam-packed Suez Canal: In 2017, the bustling waterway was responsible for about 9% of the world's seaborne petroleum trade, with a steadily growing southbound route for U.S. and Russian crude oil headed to Asia and the Middle East, ensuring its status as a crucial player in global energy security.
Source => eia.gov

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=> Fun Facts about The-Nile-River

3. Empress Eugénie's Suez Adventure

Guardian Angel of the High Seas: Empress Eugénie not only played fairy godmother to her cousin Ferdinand de Lesseps, but also doubled as the "canal's guardian angel", presiding over the Suez Canal's ecumenical blessing ceremony and sailing her way into history as she led a flotilla down the new waterway in 1869.
Source => napoleon.org

4. Overambitious Canal Construction

When the blueprint for the Suez Canal had a date that couldn't be saved, you could say it "Suez'd the day" a little too ambitiously: Surpassing its estimated construction cost of $50 million by a whopping double, the Suez Canal also took an arduous 10 years to complete, with around 1.5 million workers – many of whom were forced laborers – painstakingly digging day and night, battling diseases like cholera, all to connect a couple of water bodies.
Source => history.com

5. Uninvited Guests

Whoever said "no pain, no gain" must have been talking about the Suez Canal: This engineering marvel undeniably revolutionized international trade but at the cost of drastically altering the natural flow of water and landscape, while also providing a VIP pass for invasive species to crash the local ecosystem's party.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

6. One-Star Yelp Review

If the ancient Egyptian workforce had a Yelp page, they'd probably be rated one-star for their back-breaking, ten-year gig: The Suez Canal construction, spanning a decade (1859-1869), required the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of thousands of Egyptian laborers who were conscripted from the peasantry and paid meager wages despite their demanding toil.
Source => metro.co.uk

7. British Suez Takeover

Talk about a change of heart: from naysayers to takeover artists, the British Empire first opposed constructing the Suez Canal, fearing loss of control over seaborne roads to India, but then, with their inner pirate unleashed, they invaded Egypt in 1882 and claimed the canal for themselves, cutting travel time and distance between Britain and its star colony, India.
Source => wavellroom.com

8. VIP Lockless Waterway

Luckily for ships, the Suez Canal decided to ditch the locks and let seawater flow in like an exclusive, maritime red carpet: this lockless wonder connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez, slicing the journey between the Arabian Sea and London by roughly 5,500 miles and upward of 10 days, while nonchalantly separating Africa and Asia—talk about a world-class cut!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

9. Suez vs. Panama Showdown

In an epic game of "anything you can do, I can do better," the Suez Canal showed off its natural talents to its rival, the Panama Canal: Rather than needing an additional lane for bigger ships during its 2014 expansion, the Suez Canal already had two-way traffic in place and can now accommodate ships up to 120,000 deadweight tons, leaving the Panama Canal's 13,000 TEUs capacity in the dust.
Source => ascentlogistics.com

10. The Diva of the Desert

Goodness, overprotective much? The Suez Canal, often hailed as the "desert diva," seems to throw the most dramatic tantrums during wars, shutting her aquatic doors in a huff: The fact is, she has slammed shut only three times in her 150-year history - during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967, and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Despite these show-stopping intermissions, the diva still rules the global trade stage, playing matchmaker between Europe and Asia, while saving time and money for her shipping suitors.
Source => washingtonpost.com

11. Frenchman's Funding Fiasco

In a twist only a Frenchman could love, the Suez Canal's funding was as hard to navigate as the waterway itself: causing quite a stir between the British and French governments, like an international game of Battleship where the French have a secret map. The serious reveal: Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat, made his long-held dream a reality by finally constructing the Canal in 1869, despite British resistance, creating a massively important trade shortcut that altered global routes for good.
Source => scihi.org