48 Fun Facts About The Suez Canal

Before the Suez Canal opened, ships sailing from Europe to India had to round which cape?

Cape of Good Hope voyages around Africa were the only sea route to Asia until 1869, and ships too large for the canal still have to go that way.

The Suez Canal forms the border between which two continents?

Africa and Asia meet at the canal, so Egypt, with territory on both banks, is a country that sits on two continents.

By the mid-1950s, about two-thirds of Europe's supply of which commodity was shipped through the Suez Canal?

Oil made the canal Europe's lifeline, one reason Britain and France went to war to win it back after Egypt took it over in 1956.

The Suez Canal opened in 1869, six months after which other feat that shrank the globe?

The transcontinental railroad was finished across the United States in May 1869, so together the two let travellers circle the world in record time.

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

Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the takeover in a speech in Alexandria and promised the company's shareholders compensation at the previous day's Paris stock exchange price.

The Suez Canal's closures in 1956 and 1967 pushed shipowners to build which giant vessels for the long way round?

Supertankers made the detour pay: once ships no longer had to fit the canal, owners built them many times larger, and the biggest still cannot use it.

Unusually for a ship canal, the Suez Canal has no what?

Locks are not needed because the canal is cut at sea level through flat desert, so seawater runs freely from end to end and ships sail straight through.

Which city stands at the Suez Canal's northern entrance on the Mediterranean?

Port Said did not exist before the canal: it was founded in 1859 on the spot where the digging began.

Which Persian king set up granite stelae boasting that he had dug a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea?

Darius I's inscriptions claim that ships then sailed from Egypt through the canal to Persia, though some later ancient writers say he left the work unfinished.

Which Greek historian wrote that Pharaoh Necho abandoned his canal after an oracle warned it would only help foreigners?

Herodotus adds that 120,000 Egyptians died on the dig, and that Necho then gave it up for war, building fleets of triremes on both seas instead.

Which French ruler dropped his Suez canal plan after surveyors wrongly put the Red Sea far above the Mediterranean?

Napoleon Bonaparte's engineers measured the isthmus during his Egyptian campaign and got it badly wrong; a survey in the 1840s found the two seas almost level, clearing the way for the canal.

Which Italian city, its spice trade undercut by Portugal's sea route to India, considered digging a Suez canal centuries early?

Venice even opened talks with Egypt's Mamluk rulers, but the plan died when Sultan Selim I conquered Egypt in 1517.

The Suez Canal's French builder won his concession from which ruler of Egypt, a friend from his days as a young diplomat?

Sa'id Pasha granted a 99-year lease running from the canal's opening, so it was due to pass to Egypt in 1968 anyway, 12 years after Egypt seized it.

Which British prime minister fought the Suez Canal project for years, fearing it would undermine Britain's dominance of world shipping?

Lord Palmerston traded public insults with the canal's builder, while Britain backed a rival railway across Egypt from Alexandria to Suez, built by Robert Stephenson.

Which empress led the Suez Canal's opening procession aboard her yacht in November 1869?

Eugénie represented France, whose emperor had backed the project, and her yacht L'Aigle led dozens of ships into the canal.

Which Verdi opera was commissioned by Egypt's khedive and premiered in Cairo in 1871, two years after the Suez Canal opened?

Aida reached the stage months late because its sets and costumes were trapped in Paris during the Prussian siege of 1870-71.

A sculptor's unbuilt lighthouse colossus for the Suez Canal's entrance became the forerunner of which monument?

The Statue of Liberty grew out of Bartholdi's plan for a robed Egyptian peasant woman holding a torch, which he pitched for the canal in the 1860s and kept reworking until New York got it in 1886.

Which British prime minister snapped up Egypt's 44% stake in the Suez Canal in 1875?

Benjamin Disraeli borrowed the £4 million privately to close the deal, so Britain, which had fought the canal's construction, became its largest single shareholder.

Which banker lent the British government £4 million at short notice to buy Egypt's Suez Canal shares in 1875?

Lionel de Rothschild advanced the money for a commission, taking the risk that Parliament might later refuse to ratify the purchase.

The 1888 treaty guaranteeing every ship passage through the Suez Canal in war and peace was signed in which city?

Constantinople was the capital of the empire that still formally ruled Egypt; Britain, occupying Egypt since 1882, attached a reservation that kept the treaty from taking full effect until 1904.

Egypt seized the Suez Canal in 1956 to pay for which project after the United States and Britain withdrew their funding?

The Aswan High Dam was to be paid for out of canal tolls, Egypt's leader said; in the end the Soviet Union helped build it after the West pulled out.

Which British prime minister resigned in January 1957, his career wrecked by the Suez Crisis?

Anthony Eden had colluded in the invasion and denied it to Parliament; pushed into a humiliating retreat by American pressure, he resigned on 9 January 1957, citing ill health.

The Suez Crisis turned to war when which country invaded Egypt on 29 October 1956, secretly in league with Britain and France?

Israel struck first by secret arrangement, giving Britain and France a pretext to land troops, supposedly to separate the two sides, and retake the canal.

Egypt closed the Suez Canal at the start of which war in June 1967, keeping it shut for eight years?

The Six-Day War left enemy troops dug in on the east bank, turning the canal into a front line that did not reopen to shipping until June 1975.

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

The Yellow Fleet was named for the desert sand that caked the ships' decks; when the canal reopened, only two of them could still sail away under their own power.

Crews stranded in the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975 made their own version of what?

Postage stamps, now collectors' items, were one invention of the crews, who formed their own floating community with sports contests and social events to pass the years.

Which container ship ran aground and blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week in March 2021?

Ever Given ran aground on 23 March 2021 and lay wedged across the channel until 29 March, leaving hundreds of ships queuing at either end.

High tides freed the ship stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021 before salvors had to resort to what?

Unloading its cargo, some 18,000 containers, was the feared next step and could have taken weeks; high tides let the tugs pull the hull free first.

The ship that blocked the Suez Canal in 2021 belonged to an owner in which country?

Japan: the owner had only chartered the ship out to a Taiwanese line, so Egypt's compensation claim landed on the Japanese firm and its insurers.

Which Egyptian president launched the 'New Suez Canal' expansion in 2014 and opened it a year later?

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ordered the dig finished within a single year, and the new channel duly opened in August 2015.

How was the Suez Canal's 2014 expansion financed?

Investment certificates sold only to Egyptians were a deliberate choice: foreign investors were barred to give the dig a national identity, and pro-government media hailed it as a national triumph.

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

Ferdinand de Lesseps built the canal, but the 'Lessepsian' migrants arrived late: the canal's very salty lakes blocked their way for decades until the water evened out.

President Roosevelt met Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud aboard a US warship in 1945 on which lake along the Suez Canal?

The Great Bitter Lake was where the cruiser USS Quincy anchored after the Yalta Conference; Roosevelt also received Egypt's King Farouk and Ethiopia's Haile Selassie on board.

Which city, founded during the Suez Canal's construction, sits near its midpoint on Lake Timsah?

Ismailia, named for the khedive Isma'il, became the canal's nerve centre: the authority that runs the waterway still has its head office there.

After Suez, the canal's builder tried to repeat his triumph in which place, with disastrous results?

Panama broke him: disease killed thousands of workers, the company collapsed in 1889, and he was sentenced to prison in the scandal that followed, though he never served the term.

Which Roman emperor re-dug the ancient canal between the Nile and the Red Sea and named it after himself?

Trajan gave the waterway his own name and moved its mouth to what is now Cairo; it stayed in use on and off until a caliph closed it in the 700s.

Which Jules Verne hero is first spotted at Suez by a detective who takes him for a bank robber?

Phileas Fogg lands at Suez from the steamer Mongolia, where Detective Fix wires London for an arrest warrant; the new canal was one of the shortcuts that made an 80-day circuit thinkable.

Which empire's army crossed the desert to attack the Suez Canal in 1915, only to be beaten back by its British-led defenders?

The Ottoman Empire's troops reached the canal in early February 1915 but were driven off within days, and the waterway stayed closed to the Central Powers for the rest of the war.

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

Forced labour was banned midway through the dig, so the company turned to steam dredgers and shovels, which ended up moving most of the sand.

Which US president forced Britain and France to halt their Suez invasion?

Dwight D. Eisenhower turned on his own allies: the United States backed UN resolutions condemning the invasion and threatened economic sanctions until they pulled out.

Which now-familiar United Nations tool was first used to end the Suez Crisis of 1956?

A peacekeeping force, the UN's first, took over from the invaders along the canal, and the idea won Canada's Lester Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize.

What did Ptolemy II build at his ancient canal's mouth to hold back the sea?

A navigable lock with sluices let ships through while holding back the sea; an ancient writer says it was opened whenever a vessel needed to pass and quickly shut again.

Besides the ship canal itself, what else did the Suez Canal's builders dig across the desert?

A freshwater canal from the Nile, finished in 1863, brought drinking water to the workforce in the desert, and later let farms and towns grow up along the route.

How did Egypt block the Suez Canal to all traffic during the invasion of 1956?

Sinking ships in it shut the waterway for months; it reopened in spring 1957 only after salvage crews had lifted the wrecks.

Which poet wrote the line 'Ship me somewheres east of Suez'?

Rudyard Kipling wrote it in 'Mandalay' in 1890, and 'east of Suez' became shorthand for Britain's military commitments in Asia.

Before the Suez Canal reopened in 1975, American and British teams spent months clearing it of what?

Sea mines and other debris of two wars had to be cleared before President Sadat could lead the first convoy through in June 1975, eight years after the closure.

The 2015 'New Suez Canal' was dug so ships could do what?

Pass in both directions: a new 35 km channel dug beside the old one lets northbound and southbound convoys keep moving instead of waiting for each other.

The Suez Canal divides the rest of Egypt from which region?

Sinai lies beyond the canal's east bank, so the tunnels and bridges crossing the waterway are the peninsula's only fixed links to the rest of Egypt.