Mondo Knows Facts
The Malacca Strait narrows to under three kilometres
Shipping squeezes through the Phillips Channel near Singapore, the tightest point on the route The strait runs about 800 kilometres between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. At its narrowest it is roughly 2.8 kilometres wide, and the deepest channel is shallow enough to limit the draft of the largest tankers. A large share of the world's traded goods passes through it each year. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The Strait of Hormuz is about 39 kilometres wideIts two shipping lanes are each only about three kilometres across, separated by a bufferBab el-Mandeb means the Gate of TearsThe name is often explained by the hazards of the narrow passage between two rocky shoresThe Dover Strait is 33 kilometres wideThat short gap made the Channel Tunnel possible and keeps ferries busy todayMagellan found a sea route past South AmericaBefore the Panama Canal opened, ships rounded South America through this 570 kilometre passageThe Dardanelles has been a strategic waterway for millenniaThe 61 kilometre channel links the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara and is only a few kilometres wideThe Torres Strait is shallow and full of reefsIt separates Cape York from New Guinea and is only about 150 kilometres across at its widest
🗺️ World Geographyfact 135 of 200
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Tags: straits, shipping, asia
The Malacca Strait narrows to under three kilometres: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Shipping squeezes through the Phillips Channel near Singapore, the tightest point on the route. The figure is taken from Royal Museums Greenwich, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.