Mondo Knows Facts
The Panama Canal cuts through the Isthmus of Panama
Opened in 1914, the eighty-kilometre artificial waterway connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
By cutting through Central America, the Panama Canal allows commercial ships to avoid the hazardous journey around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. The canal operates a system of locks that lift ships 26 metres above sea level to Gatun Lake before lowering them on the other side. Thousands of ships pass through every year.
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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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Tags: panama canal, panama, waterways, shipping
The Panama Canal cuts through the Isthmus of Panama: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Opened in 1914, the eighty-kilometre artificial waterway connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The figure is taken from Smithsonian Magazine, 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 1,090 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.
