50 Fun Facts About The Suez Canal

The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to which other body of water?

It runs 193.3 km through the Isthmus of Suez from Port Said to Port Tewfik at Suez.

The canal forms the border between which two continents?

It cuts the Sinai Peninsula off from the rest of Egypt.

Which French diplomat formed the company that built the canal in 1858?

He later tried to repeat the trick at Panama, where malaria, yellow fever and money troubles wrecked the project.

The canal officially opened in which year?

Construction had begun on the shore of the future Port Said on 25 April 1859.

Which Egyptian president nationalised the canal in July 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis?

He announced it in a speech in Alexandria, citing 120,000 deaths during the canal's construction.

Roughly how long is the Suez Canal?

It cuts the Arabian Sea to London journey by about 8,900 km compared with going round Africa.

How many locks does the Suez Canal have?

It is a sea-level waterway following Alois Negrelli's plans, with seawater flowing freely through it.

The canal's northern terminus is Port Said. What is the city at its southern end?

The southern harbour is Port Tewfik; Ismailia sits near the midpoint by Lake Timsah.

Ancient canals linking the Nile to the Red Sea are recorded, but which Persian king engineered the only fully functional one?

Herodotus said it was wide enough for two triremes to pass with oars extended; Darius set up granite stelae to boast of it.

According to Herodotus, which pharaoh abandoned his canal after an oracle warned that others would benefit from it?

Herodotus was told 120,000 men died on the project, a figure historians consider exaggerated.

Napoleon abandoned plans for a canal because of the mistaken belief that the Red Sea was how much higher than the Mediterranean?

Fragmentary wartime surveys were to blame; an 1846 survey finally proved there was no practical difference.

Which Italian city, ruined as a spice middleman after Dias rounded Africa in 1488, contemplated digging a Suez canal 400 years early?

Talks with the Mamluks ended when the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517.

De Lesseps obtained his concession from which ruler of Egypt, whom he had befriended as a young diplomat?

The company was to run the canal for 99 years from opening.

Which British statesman was the canal project's 'most unwavering foe', fearing it would end Britain's exclusive advantages?

Britain preferred a railway from Alexandria via Cairo to Suez, which Robert Stephenson built.

Which empress sailed her yacht L'Aigle at the head of the opening procession in November 1869?

Emperor Franz Joseph and the Crown Prince of Prussia were also among the guests.

Which Verdi opera, set in ancient Egypt, was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and premiered there in December 1871?

It is often wrongly said to have been written for the canal's opening; the opera house had opened with Rigoletto in 1869.

Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's rejected design for a torch-bearing colossus at the canal entrance was recycled as what?

'Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia' became 'Liberty Enlightening the World' in New York Harbor in 1886.

In 1875 the debt-ridden Isma'il Pasha sold his 44% share in the canal to which government?

Disraeli borrowed £4 million from Lionel de Rothschild to buy the 177,000 shares.

Which banker lent Disraeli the £4 million to buy Egypt's canal shares?

Isma'il, who had declared 'we are now part of Europe', got about £4,000,000 for a stake worth vastly more.

The 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal open to every vessel 'in time of war as in time of peace' and put it under whose protection?

Britain had occupied Egypt in 1882 after the Urabi Revolt, though the country nominally remained Ottoman.

Nasser's nationalisation speech gave what figure for deaths during the canal's construction?

The company's own chief medical officer had reported a far lower toll; the true number is disputed.

Which British prime minister resigned in January 1957 after being accused of misleading Parliament over the Suez Crisis?

US pressure and a run on sterling forced Britain, France and Israel to withdraw.

The 1956 crisis began when which country invaded Egypt on 29 October, in secret collusion with Britain and France?

Ben-Gurion agreed to withdraw from Sinai only once a UN force was arranged for the canal zone.

Egypt closed the canal at the start of which war in June 1967, and kept it shut for eight years?

It reopened on 5 June 1975, exactly eight years after closing.

The fifteen cargo ships trapped in the canal from 1967 to 1975 were nicknamed what?

Desert sand coated them; their crews issued their own postage stamps, now collectors' items.

The ships stranded in the canal from 1967 to 1975 belonged to how many countries?

They included West Germany, Sweden, France, the UK, the US, Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.

Which container ship blocked the canal in both directions in March 2021?

The 400-metre, 20,000-TEU vessel was buffeted by strong winds and wedged diagonally across the channel.

For how many days did the 2021 grounding block the Suez Canal?

It ran aground on 23 March 2021 and was refloated on 29 March, holding up an estimated $9 billion of trade a day.

The ship that blocked the canal in 2021 is operated by which Taiwanese shipping line?

It is owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha, a subsidiary of Japan's Imabari Shipbuilding, and chartered to Evergreen.

Roughly how long is the ship that blocked the canal in 2021?

At 224,000 tons it is one of 13 ships built to Imabari's 20000 design.

The 2014–15 expansion of the canal was designed to raise its daily capacity from 49 ships to how many?

It cost about $9 billion, raised entirely from investment certificates sold to Egyptians.

How was the 2014 canal expansion financed?

Ordinary Egyptians bought interest-bearing certificates worth LE 59.4 billion in a matter of days.

The migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean through the canal is named after whom?

'Lessepsian migration', or the 'Erythrean invasion', has brought hundreds of species into the eastern Mediterranean.

In February 1945 President Roosevelt met King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard USS Quincy in which body of water along the canal?

He had flown straight from the Yalta Conference for the meeting that founded the US–Saudi relationship.

The city near the canal's midpoint, founded in 1862 and named for a khedive, is which?

Port Fuad, across from Port Said, was founded in 1925 and Port Tewfik at the southern entrance in 1867.

After building the canal, de Lesseps tried to dig a sea-level canal without locks where, with disastrous results?

Malaria, yellow fever and a financial scandal wrecked the French attempt in the 1880s.

Roman emperor Trajan re-dug the ancient Nile-Red Sea canal and named it what?

After the Arab conquest of 641, Amr ibn al-As restored it to link Egypt with Medina.

Napoleon's engineers discovered the remnants of the ancient canal in 1799 during which French military expedition?

Their maps in the Description de l'Égypte traced it north from the Red Sea and west toward the Nile.

Which 16th-century Ottoman grand vizier tried to build a Red Sea–Mediterranean canal to link the empire's fleets?

The project was judged too expensive and never completed.

Britain's early opposition to the canal included objecting to what practice used in its construction?

The corvée was halted, and Egyptian involuntary labour on the project ceased.

Roughly how many vessels passed through the canal in 2021?

That works out at an average of 56 ships a day.

Which state-owned Egyptian body has operated the canal since its 1956 nationalisation?

The Suez Canal Authority took over after nationalisation and opened a new side channel to the East Terminal in 2016.

Ptolemy II built what feature at Arsinoe to stop Red Sea salt water spoiling the fresh water of his canal?

An inscription at Pithom records the reopening in 270 or 269 BCE.

The 1846 survey by Paul-Adrien Bourdaloue was the first accepted proof of what?

It demolished the sea-level myth that had stopped Napoleon.

How long was the Suez Canal when it opened in 1869, versus 193 km after later expansions?

It was also only 8 metres deep then, against 24 metres after successive enlargements.

Which Anchor Line steamer was the first ship to pass through the canal from south to north?

The opening convoy's first day ended at Lake Timsah, 76 km south of Port Said.

What was the codename of the 6 October 1973 Egyptian assault across the canal into Sinai?

Israel counter-attacked across the canal on 22 October and stayed west of it until the Sinai I agreement of January 1974.

Who stood beside President Sadat when he reopened the canal aboard a destroyer in 1975?

The destroyer led the first northbound convoy to Port Said after the eight-year closure.

To what width was the Ballah Bypass widened in the 2014 'New Suez Canal' project?

President el-Sisi ordered the 35 km stretch widened from 61 metres so ships could transit in both directions at once.

What is the maximum draft of a ship that can transit the canal?

That equates to about 240,000 deadweight tons; Suezmax vessels are larger than even New Panamax ships.