THE PANAMA CANAL EXPANSION USED ENOUGH STEEL TO BUILD 22 EIFFEL TOWERS

The Cosco Shipping Panama freighter made history Sunday by being the first working ship to slip through the Panama Canal’s huge new locks.

The expansion project swallowed enough steel to build 22 Eiffel Towers, cost $5.2 billion and took nine years to complete. It will allow the giant “New Panamax” class of container ships and supertankers to sail through the 48-mile-long waterway that slices through the narrow isthmus that separates North and South America.

These ships can carry as many as 14,000 containers and the star freighter on Sunday had almost 10,000 stacked on board like Jenga blocks. That’s nearly twice as many as the largest ships that have been motoring through until now.