Located in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, Lock 21 of the Trent-Severn Waterway is the highest hydraulic lift lock in the world. The site first opened on July 9, 1904, and accomplishes a lift of 65 feet. The lock itself is 120 feet long and 32 feet wide, capable of raising boats within that size range.

The Karakum Canal is among the most extensive canals in the world in terms of water supply. Completed in 1967 after 13 years of construction, the canal spans a distance of around 870 miles throughout the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan. Around 280 miles of the canal are navigable, and it’s primarily used for irrigation and fishing.

Featuring cruises along its waters and car-free bike paths along its banks, Sweden’s Göta Canal is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. Its first portion was inaugurated in 1822, though the canal wasn’t fully completed until a decade later. It connects Lake Vänern in the central-west portion of the country with Lake Vättern along Sweden’s east coast.

The Canal du Midi was constructed between 1667 and 1694 and served as a precursor to the French Industrial Revolution. It contains 328 structures that span a distance of approximately 150 miles. Its creator, Pierre-Paul Riquet, sought to maintain architectural aesthetics and made the canal into a work of art in addition to being a practical method of travel.

Each year, Germany’s Kiel Canal sees a similar number of ships as the Panama and Suez canals combined. Approximately 9,000 workers took eight years to build the canal, which opened in 1887 and created a shorter route between the Baltic Sea and North Sea, saving ships about 18 hours of travel time.

The Caledonian Canal spans a distance of 60 miles and connects many “lochs” (lakes) throughout the Scottish Highlands. Perhaps no loch is more well-known than Loch Ness, home of the purported Loch Ness Monster. The canal opened in 1822, contains 29 locks, and is fed by the waters of Lochs Ness, Dochfour, Oich, and Lochy.

Belgium’s Kieldrecht Lock opened in 2016 at the Port of Antwerp and is the world’s largest lock system. At 223 feet wide, 1,640 feet long, and 58 feet deep, the lock beats out the nearby Berendrecht Lock, which previously held the record. The Kieldrecht Lock contains 55,000 tons of reinforced steel — three times the amount of steel used to construct the Eiffel Tower.

Manchester was at the pinnacle of industrial manufacturing in the 1800s, though its supply lines were limited due to its inland location. The Manchester Ship Canal Act 1885 sought to change that, and a 36-mile-long canal opened to traffic in 1894, connecting the English city with the Irish Sea and opening it up to large vessels.

The Welland Canal is an important segment of the St. Lawrence Seaway, as the canal allows large vessels to pass from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and vice versa. The canal boasts a length of 27.6 miles, and utilizes eight separate locks to help account for the 327-foot difference in elevation between the two Great Lakes.

Completed in 1893, the Corinth Canal reaches depths of up to 260 feet. However, some segments are only 82 feet wide and thus unable to accommodate many large modern ships. The canal, which connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea, serves approximately 11,000 vessels per year.

In the wintertime, Ottawa’s Rideau Canal freezes over, becoming a four-mile-long ice skating rink used by tourists and commuters alike. This UNESCO World Heritage Site has been dubbed the “world’s largest skating rink,” and was ice skatable for a record 59 days in 2015.

In one of the more widely publicized canal-related incidents, the megaship Ever Given became stuck in the waterways of the Suez Canal in March 2021. The incident froze around $10 billion in worldwide trade for each of the six days that it blocked passage through the canal. In the wake of the event, Egypt announced plans to widen and deepen the Suez Canal.

Construction on the 363-mile-long Erie Canal began in 1817 in Rome, New York, and it opened in 1825. The canal contained 83 locks upon its opening (though that number has since shrunk to 57), and it originally took five days to traverse the entire waterway. An engineering marvel, the Erie Canal opened a direct trade route from New York City to the Midwest.

Construction on Amsterdam’s three main canals began in 1612. The Herengracht (or Gentleman’s Canal) is considered Amsterdam’s most important waterway — located closest to the city center, it was home to Amsterdam’s richest residents in the 17th century. The Keizersgracht (Emperor’s Canal) was named after Maximillian of Austria and is the middle of the three canals. The outermost canal is the Prinsengracht (Prince’s Canal).

The Venice Historical Regatta is a citywide boat race with roots that date to the 13th century. The event begins with a ceremonial parade along the Grand Canal before pitting expert oarsmen against one another. The rowing competition takes place on the first Sunday of September each year, and features four races that occur after the completion of the parade.

The SS Ancon made history on August 15, 1914, when it completed the first ever Atlantic-to-Pacific journey through the Panama Canal. Since then, several other records have been set in the famous waterway, including the Arco Texas tanker which carried a record 65,299 tons of cargo (in this case, oil) through the Panama Canal on December 15, 1981.

Officially known as just the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, this UNESCO World Heritage Site was constructed from the fifth century BCE onward, and by the 13th century, it consisted of over 1,200 miles of artificial waterways. In the seventh century, the ruling Sui dynasty conceived the canal as a means of vast communication for their empire.

After French officials tried and failed to build a canal in the same region years earlier, the U.S. purchased Panama’s canal zone for $40 million in 1902. Construction commenced in 1904, and while it was still on track during a visit from Roosevelt in 1906, the project suffered several setbacks and wasn’t completed until 1914.

Though a series of small canals connecting the Nile River to the Red Sea were in use as far back as 2000 BCE, the Suez Canal enabled direct passage when it opened on November 17, 1869. An estimated 1.5 million people worked on the 10-year project, and the cost was around $100 million, more than double the original estimate.

Venice’s Grand Canal divides the city into two parts. The canal is just over two miles long and ranges from 100 to 225 feet wide. A mix of traditional gondolas and motorized water buses (known in Italian as “vaporetti”) make up the bulk of the canal’s traffic. Four bridges span the Grand Canal, most famously the 16th-century Rialto Bridge located at its halfway point.