50 Fun Facts About Panama

Which Central American country shares Panama's western border?

Costa Rica: the border is the longer of Panama's two, and the neighbours jointly protect the cloud forests along it as a single World Heritage park, La Amistad.

Which Spanish explorer crossed the isthmus in 1513 as the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas?

Vasco Nunez de Balboa waded into the surf in full armour to claim the 'South Sea' for Spain; a few years later a rival governor had him tried for treason and beheaded.

Panama City, founded on the Pacific in 1519, became the launch pad for Spain's conquest of which empire?

The Inca: the expeditions that toppled Peru set out from the new port, and for generations afterwards Peruvian gold and silver came back the same way to cross the isthmus by mule train.

Which privateer sacked the city of Panama in 1671?

Henry Morgan struck after England and Spain had made peace, so he was arrested and shipped to London; two years later the king knighted him and sent him back to Jamaica as deputy governor.

A failed colony on the Isthmus of Panama in 1698 nearly bankrupted which European country?

Scotland sank a large share of its capital into the colony, and the ruin it left is often cited as a reason the country accepted union with England a few years later.

After leaving Spain in 1821, Panama joined which short-lived union led by Simón Bolívar?

Gran Colombia broke apart within a decade, though not before Bolívar had chosen the isthmus to host his 1826 congress of the newly freed American republics.

Which US president sent warships to back Panama's 1903 independence?

Theodore Roosevelt acted after Bogotá's lawmakers rejected his canal treaty; within weeks the new republic had signed over a ten-mile-wide zone across the isthmus.

The 1903 treaty granting the US the Canal Zone was signed for Panama by an envoy of what nationality?

French: Philippe Bunau-Varilla, an engineer from the failed French canal company, rushed the signing through before a delegation of actual Panamanians could arrive to object.

Which Frenchman led the doomed first attempt at a Panama canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps was a promoter, not an engineer, and held out for a sea-level canal like Suez until work had gone on for six years, though his own engineers had judged it impracticable.

Which famous engineer was convicted, then cleared, over France's failed Panama canal?

Gustave Eiffel had agreed to build the canal's locks; France's top appeal court annulled his sentence, but he had already left business and gave his last thirty years to science.

Colonel William Gorgas enabled US canal construction by attacking which two diseases?

Yellow fever and malaria: his 'Gorgas gangs' drained ditches, filmed puddles with oil and fumigated buildings, even emptying the holy-water fonts in churches, to kill the mosquitoes behind both.

Which US Army engineer took charge of the Panama Canal in 1907 and saw it open?

George Washington Goethals was brought in after two civilian chief engineers had quit in turn, and was handed authority over almost everything in the Canal Zone; he stayed on as its first governor.

Which event overshadowed the Panama Canal's grand opening?

The First World War broke out just before the canal opened in August 1914, so the planned festivities shrank to a modest local affair, with the steamer Ancon making the official first crossing.

Ships transiting the canal are lifted about 26 metres to which lake, created by damming the Chagres River?

Gatun Lake does more than float ships over the divide: it is the reservoir that works the locks, and each passing ship sends millions of litres of its fresh water out to sea.

The lowest toll ever paid on the Panama Canal was 36 cents, charged in 1928 to a man who did what?

Swam it: travel writer Richard Halliburton covered the canal in stages, and the authorities charged him the way they would a ship, by his tonnage.

The 1977 Panama Canal treaties are named after Omar Torrijos and which US president?

Jimmy Carter signed in September 1977, but the Senate took more than six months to approve the treaties; the Canal Zone then ceased to exist in 1979 and the canal itself changed hands on the last day of 1999.

What did the Panama Canal's 2016 expansion add?

A third lane of bigger locks roughly doubled the canal's capacity and gave shipping a new size class, the Neopanamax, built to the largest dimensions the new chambers can take.

The 1964 riots over flying Panama's flag in the Canal Zone left more than 20 dead and are commemorated as what?

Martyrs' Day, 9 January, is a day of national mourning: the riots began after American students flew their own flag alone at a Canal Zone high school and a Panamanian flag was torn in the scuffle.

Panama's military strongman Omar Torrijos died in 1981 in what?

A plane crash on 31 July 1981 set off a long struggle for his job: within little more than four years Panama had been through three military commanders and five civilian presidents.

The December 1989 US invasion that toppled Manuel Noriega was codenamed what?

Operation Just Cause toppled a ruler who had spent decades as a paid informant of the CIA, and who had just annulled an election that the opposition appeared to have won by a wide margin.

Where did Noriega take refuge before surrendering on 3 January 1990?

The Vatican's embassy sheltered him for ten days while US troops outside blasted rock music at the building; he then gave himself up and was flown to Miami to stand trial for drug trafficking.

Since 1990, which distinction has Panama shared with only one other Central American country?

No standing military: the army that Noriega commanded was disbanded after the 1989 invasion, and a 1994 constitutional change made the ban permanent, leaving police and border units to do the job.

Panama mints its own coins, but which currency supplies all of its paper money?

The US dollar has circulated at par with Panama's own coinage since 1904; with no notes of its own to print, the country can neither create money nor devalue its currency.

Decades before the canal, what was built across Panama to carry California Gold Rush traffic?

A railroad, opened in 1855, ran roughly where the canal does now; hundreds of thousands of gold seekers crossed the isthmus in those years, and a new Atlantic port grew up at its terminus.

From the summit of Volcan Baru, Panama's highest point, what can a climber see on a clear day?

The Pacific and the Caribbean both show from the top when cloud allows, which is not often; it is also one of the few spots in tropical Panama where the temperature falls below freezing.

The Darien Gap on Panama's southeastern border is the only break in which road system?

The Pan-American Highway runs from Alaska to the tip of Argentina everywhere but here: the road simply ends at the Panamanian town of Yaviza, and plans to finish it stalled partly over fears of cattle disease spreading north.

In 2023 more than half a million people crossed the Darien Gap on foot, mostly heading where?

The US-Mexico border was the goal for most of the record 520,000 who crossed that year, more than double the year before; the surge was driven largely by Venezuelans fleeing their country's collapse.

Panama's isthmus rose from the sea some three million years ago, first allowing what?

Animals walked between the Americas: opossums and armadillos headed north while bears, cats and horses went south, and the new land also cut the oceans apart, bending Atlantic currents into today's Gulf Stream.

At the 2021 Glasgow climate summit, Panama formed an alliance of carbon-negative countries with which two others?

Bhutan and Suriname: like Panama they are small, heavily forested nations whose trees absorb more carbon than their economies emit, and the three signed a joint call for outside finance.

Which UNESCO-listed national park is the largest protected area in Panama?

Darien National Park covers some 575,000 hectares along almost the whole Colombian border, and it is no empty wilderness: Embera, Wounaan and Guna communities still live inside it.

The Guna people of the San Blas islands are famous for which brightly coloured textile panels?

Molas are sewn in reverse appliqué and worn as the panels of a Guna woman's blouse; a 1920s drive to make the women swap them for dresses helped set off the Guna uprising of 1925.

What is Panama's traditional full white women's gown, worn with gold jewellery, called?

The pollera, by the popular account, began as the cool cotton dress of colonial servants; their mistresses, stifling in satin and brocade, borrowed it and piled on lace, gold and hair ornaments.

Which Panamanian salsa star, also a Hollywood actor, ran for his country's presidency in 1994?

Rubén Blades campaigned with songs and a guitar for Papa Egoró, a party he had founded himself, and finished third with about 17 percent of the vote.

Despite the name, the Panama hat actually originates in which country?

Ecuador: the toquilla-straw hats were shipped to the isthmus for sale to the world, and Gold Rush travellers crossing it bought them against the sun, so the name of the marketplace stuck.

Which Hall of Fame hitter, a seven-time batting champion, was born on a train in the Panama Canal Zone?

Rod Carew was named after the doctor who delivered him on board; he learned to hit with a broomstick and bottle caps before his family left for the United States in his teens.

Mariano Rivera spent 19 seasons closing games for which team?

New York Yankees: Rivera grew up in a Panamanian fishing village playing with cardboard gloves and tree-branch bats, and retired with a record 652 saves, nearly all built on one pitch, his cut fastball.

Roberto Durán's 1980 surrender to Sugar Ray Leonard is remembered by which two words?

No más, 'no more', is what the referee says he heard; Durán denies ever saying it, and he came back to win world titles in two more weight classes, four in all.

Panama's men reached their first World Cup in 2018, drawn against England, Tunisia and which other side?

Belgium beat them 3-0 in their opening match and Panama went on to lose all three games, yet Felipe Baloy's late strike in a 6-1 defeat by England, the country's first World Cup goal, was cheered like a win.

The unusually tall Panama Al Brown became Latin America's first world boxing champion in which division?

Bantamweight: Brown towered over the men he fought and was the best in the division for most of a decade from 1929, yet he died penniless in 1951.

Which Panamanian city at the canal's Caribbean entrance hosts one of the world's largest duty-free trade zones?

Colón's free zone re-exports goods across Latin America and the Caribbean, yet a large share of the city's own people live in poverty just outside it.

Which airline, based at Tocumen International Airport, is Panama's flag carrier?

Copa Airlines began in the 1940s as a domestic carrier part-owned by Pan American; it dropped its domestic routes in 1980 and now sells its base as the 'Hub of the Americas', a connecting point between the two continents.

The 2016 Panama Papers leak came from which Panamanian law firm?

Mossack Fonseca lost more than 11.5 million of its files in the leak, which exposed the offshore companies of politicians and celebrities around the world; two years later the firm closed.

Panama's brightly painted, privately run buses, converted from old US school buses, were nicknamed what?

Diablos rojos, 'red devils', were retired American school buses that their owners repainted in loud colours; from the end of 2010 Panama City began replacing them with a regulated bus network.

The flag raised at Panama's independence in 1903 was sewn in secret by whom?

The president's wife to be: María de la Ossa de Amador bought the cloth from three different shops to avoid suspicion, then stitched the design drawn by her husband's son, months before he took office.

What was Panama's leading export by value in 2022?

Copper ore from one giant open-pit mine topped the list; after mass protests in 2023 the mine was closed, a shutdown that slowed the whole economy the following year.

In Panama, what is a comarca?

An Indigenous region with its own government: Guna Yala grew out of the Guna uprising of 1925, whose peace terms gave the San Blas islands a measure of self-rule, and became official in 1938.

Which giant rainforest raptor, shown on Panama's coat of arms, is the country's national bird?

Harpy eagle: it spreads its wings above the shield on the national arms, yet forest loss and hunting have made the bird itself rare across most of Central America, with Panama one of its last footholds there.

Although the Pacific lies west of the Atlantic, a ship crossing the Panama Canal towards it sails mainly in which direction?

South-east: the isthmus lies on its side here, so the canal runs from north-west to south-east and its Pacific mouth ends up some 40 kilometres east of its Atlantic one.

Most of the labourers who dug the American-built Panama Canal were recruited from where?

The British West Indies supplied about three-quarters of the workforce, many of them from Barbados, and the same workers made up most of the thousands who died during the American years.

Which coffee variety, grown in Panama's western highlands, has repeatedly sold for record prices at auction?

Geisha coffee from a family estate near the town of Boquete won a national tasting contest in the mid-2000s and sold for a record price; lots from the same hills have broken the record several times since.