On 23 March, a vast container ship called the Ever Given, on its way from the Yantian district of China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, became lodged in the southern end of the Suez Canal, an artificial channel through Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Efforts to unblock the canal on 24 March saw the ship partially freed and pulled alongside the bank but traffic is yet to resume. The ship weighs 220,000 tonnes and is 400 metres long, so moving it was no small feat.