42 Fun Facts About Red Sea

The Red Sea separates Africa from which landmass?

Arabia and Africa send it almost no river water, so the sea loses far more to evaporation than rain replaces, making it one of the world's saltiest.

The Red Sea is an inlet of which larger body of water?

Indian Ocean water flows in at the surface through the southern strait, while a strong undercurrent carries dense, salty Red Sea water back out.

Which peninsula sits between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba at the top of the Red Sea?

Sinai was handed back to Egypt by Israel in 1982, a withdrawal the two countries had agreed in their 1979 peace treaty.

What is the name of the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea?

Bab-el-Mandeb means 'Gate of Tears' or 'Gate of Grief', a name said to recall its dangerous waters or, in one legend, the people drowned by an earthquake.

Which country at the southern mouth of the Red Sea hosts both American and Chinese military bases?

Djibouti hosts China's first overseas military base, opened in 2017 to support its navy's anti-piracy patrols, only a few kilometres from the US base.

Which of these countries has a coastline on the Red Sea?

Sudan has a Red Sea coast, but Ethiopia became landlocked when Eritrea, its former province along the sea, broke away in 1993.

Which Red Sea port has long been the main sea gateway for Muslim pilgrims heading to Mecca?

Jeddah was under Turkish rule until 1916 and was taken by Ibn Saud in 1925, bringing Mecca's port under Saudi rule.

Which Israeli city sits at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba?

Eilat's site was taken in 1949 by Israeli soldiers who had no flag with them, so they drew stripes in ink on a white sheet and raised that.

Which coffee name comes from a Red Sea port that once shipped the beans?

Mocha, a port in Yemen, lent its name to the coffee it exported, yet the beans themselves were grown further inland.

Seasonal blooms of which kind of organism are one suggested origin of the Red Sea's name?

A cyanobacterium, Trichodesmium erythraeum, turns the water reddish-brown as its blooms die off, though another theory says 'red' once simply meant south.

Yam Suph, the Hebrew name traditionally translated as the Red Sea, literally means the Sea of what?

Reeds is what suph means, the word for the Nile rushes where baby Moses was hidden, so some scholars place the crossing at a reedy marsh.

Which book of the Bible describes Moses stretching out his hand to part the Red Sea?

Exodus says the waters then flowed back over Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen, so that not one of the pursuing soldiers survived.

Which shrinking body of water was a planned pipeline from the Red Sea meant to help replenish?

The Dead Sea has been sinking since Israel and Jordan began diverting much of the Jordan River's flow in the 1960s, so leftover water from a desalination plant on the Red Sea was meant to top it up.

Which container ship got stuck across the Suez Canal in March 2021, holding up hundreds of vessels?

Ever Given was pulled free after six days, once two powerful seagoing tugs arrived and a full-moon high tide helped lift its bow off the bank.

The Red Sea was formed by which tectonic process?

Rifting apart of two plates is still under way, as recent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes along the valley show, so the Red Sea keeps slowly getting wider.

Which seafaring people did Pharaoh Necho reportedly send from the Red Sea to voyage around Africa?

Phoenicians came back saying the sun had been on their right as they rounded Africa, a claim Herodotus doubted but one that fits sailing west below the equator.

What did mid-20th-century surveys discover in the deepest parts of the central Red Sea?

Anomalously hot brines are heated from below the sea floor, and the muds beneath them hold thick deposits rich in metals such as zinc and copper.

Which British officer helped desert fighters seize the Red Sea port of Aqaba from the Ottomans in 1917?

T. E. Lawrence reached Aqaba with the fighters after a two-month desert march, then tried to coordinate their raids with General Allenby's advance on Jerusalem.

Which seagrass-grazing sea mammal lives in the Red Sea's shallow bays?

Dugongs pull up whole seagrass plants, roots and all, so a grazing herd leaves furrows and clouds of stirred-up sand along the sea floor.

Why do northern Red Sea corals survive heat that bleaches other reefs?

Their ancestors came from hotter water in the south over thousands of years, and the heat tolerance they kept could leave these reefs among the last standing by 2100.

Which spy agency secretly ran a Red Sea diving resort in the early 1980s as cover for rescuing Ethiopian Jews?

Mossad agents looked after real holidaymakers by day, while on some nights a squad slipped away to collect refugees, who were then taken out by boat.

Which British prime minister arranged the purchase of the khedive's shares in the Suez Canal Company in 1875?

Benjamin Disraeli borrowed £4 million from his friend Lionel de Rothschild's bank to buy the shares fast, even though Parliament could still have refused the deal.

Which French diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps was later found guilty over the failed Panama canal company, though his prison sentence was overturned.

Which Egyptian leader nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis?

Gamal Abdel Nasser offered to compensate the company's owners, yet Britain and France secretly planned an invasion with Israel.

The Suez Canal was closed for eight years after which conflict?

The Six-Day War left a convoy of cargo ships stranded mid-canal, and their crews painted their own postage stamps, which Egypt's post still franked.

The earliest known Red Sea explorations were Egyptian voyages seeking trade with which land?

Punt was never pinned on a map, but tests on mummified baboons, among the animals Egyptians brought back from Punt, point toward what is now Eritrea.

Which Persian king built a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea in the 6th century BCE?

Darius the Great's own inscriptions celebrate completing the canal, though Strabo says he quit near the end, fearing the higher sea would flood Egypt.

What is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea?

A Greek sailing guide apparently written by a merchant, it credits the pilot Hippalus with first steering straight across open water instead of hugging the coasts.

Which Portuguese commander besieged Aden in 1513, leading the first modern European fleet into the Red Sea?

Afonso de Albuquerque was beaten back from Aden, but rather than turn back at once he sailed on to explore the sea's coasts.

In 2024, which headland did hundreds of cargo ships sail around to avoid attacks in the Red Sea?

Cape of Good Hope detours added about 10 days to each voyage and, by some estimates, around $1 million in extra fuel.

Which armed group's attacks on shipping sharply cut Suez Canal container traffic in 2024?

The Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen, said they were targeting ships linked to Israel over the Gaza war, attacking with missiles, drones and even hijackers.

The SS Thistlegorm, one of the Red Sea's most famous dive wrecks, was sunk in 1941 by what?

German bomber aircraft had been sent to hunt a troopship, and when they couldn't find it, one dropped its bombs on this freighter at anchor instead.

Which explorer had a team live in an undersea house in the Red Sea for a month in 1963?

Jacques Cousteau turned the experiment into World Without Sun, a film that won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

Which Egyptian resort banned swimming in December 2010 after shark attacks?

Sharm el-Sheikh's sharks may have been drawn close to shore by sheep carcasses dumped from a livestock ship, though experts also blamed overfishing.

The Blue Hole, a famous and dangerous dive site, is near which Egyptian town?

Dahab's Blue Hole has been nicknamed the 'divers' cemetery', since many divers have died attempting the deep tunnel that links it to the open sea.

Which ancient queen's homeland is claimed by both Yemen and Ethiopia?

Queen of Sheba stories in Ethiopia say her son by King Solomon brought the Ark of the Covenant home, and locals insist it is still kept in a chapel in Aksum.

Per the single-origin hypothesis, the strait at the Red Sea's southern end witnessed what?

Sea levels were far lower then, leaving the strait shallow or even dry.

Which future Canadian prime minister won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the 1956 Suez Crisis?

Lester Pearson proposed the UN Emergency Force that policed the area, letting the invading nations withdraw with a minimum loss of face.

Which Egyptian pharaoh sent a celebrated trading expedition down the Red Sea in the 15th century BCE?

Hatshepsut's ships brought back living myrrh trees, which were planted at her temple, where scenes of the whole voyage were carved into the walls.

Roman sea trade through the Red Sea took off under which emperor?

Augustus's takeover of Egypt set that trade growing, and Pliny the Elder later complained that eastern luxuries cost the empire 100 million sesterces a year.

Which European country ruled Eritrea, on the Red Sea coast, as a colony from 1890?

Italy proclaimed Eritrea a colony in 1890 and kept it for half a century, until British forces took it over in 1941, during the Second World War.

The cargo ship Rubymar, which sank in the Red Sea in March 2024, was carrying what?

Fertiliser spilling from the wreck could feed sudden algal blooms that use up oxygen in the sea, experts warned, putting nearby coral reefs at risk.