Suez Canal

For a long time, the trade route passed through corners and detours. This was the reason for the revival of the idea of ​​building a canal connecting the Red and Mediterranean Seas. The project was presented several times, but met with disapproval. 
The fast temps of industrial development in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries necessitated an increase in the transport of large volumes of cargo - coal, ores, timber, cereals and others, and the transportation of long distances across the vast oceans made it more expensive. That is why the idea of ​​digging the narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to avoid bypassing Africa has come to the fore again.
In the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte first conceived the construction of a navigable canal. The project is rejected by the French specialists, because according to their expert assessment the level of the Red Sea is 9,908 m higher than that of the Mediterranean Sea and it is impossible to build without locks.
In the 1840s, new research was conducted to prove that the levels of the two seas were irrelevant to the construction of the canal. In 1856, the French consul in Alexandria, Ferdinand de Lesseps, succeeded in obtaining permission from Mohammed Saeed Pasha (ruler of Egypt and son of Mohammed Ali Pasha) to build a canal.
He had the honor of organizing a company to raise funds, prepare and manage the construction. And so, after about 11 years of tireless work plus the cost of the thousands of Egyptian peasants who died of exhaustion and disease from the poor, on November 17, 1869, the Suez Canal was officially opened in the presence of many princes and other important European figures. It is believed that the opera Aida was written by Verdi precisely for the opening ceremony, and it itself was erected as the "celebration of the century."
In 1956, the channel was nationalized by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and this act led to the so-called Suez Crisis. 
The Suez Canal has a fairway, no locks and can accommodate ships and tankers with a capacity of up to 150,000 tons. Its maximum depth is 16 meters, and it is planned to dig up to 22 meters by 2010. 
In addition, another canal was run parallel to the Suez Canal to supply ships with fresh water, the waters of which come from the Nile River. Near the city of Ismailia, it is divided into two branches: the northern (Abasia Canal) - going to Port Said, and southern - in Suez. The Suez Canal is of great importance for world trade and the reason for this is the great shortening of roads.