Did you know . . . ?

Cool facts about the Panama Canal

• Since it opened August 15, 1914 more than 960,000 ships have transited the Canal. (That’s almost 1 million!)

• It takes a ship an average of 8-10 hours to transit through the Canal.

• A ship saves 7,860 nautical miles when traveling from New York to San Francisco through the Canal instead of the Cape of Horn.

• The three sets of locks of the two-lane Canal work as water elevators that lift the ships to the level of Gatun Lake, 26 meters over sea level, and later lower them again to sea level on the other side of the Isthmus of Panama. (26 meters is over 85 feet!)

• Expansion of the Canal is slated to be complete in 2014, 100 years after the Canal was built.

• The expansion will add new locks - one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic side of the Canal.

Check out this cool animation on how the locks work.

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