Interesting facts about the maritime industry and working at sea

There are about 1.5 million sailors in the world. Approximately one in three of them is Filipino, and only 2% of sailors are women.
Work at sea has had a significant impact on the English language. For example, the well-known expression "show true colors," literally translated as "show true colors" (analogous to "show true face" in Ukrainian), is related to the maritime rule of hoisting your country's flag on a ship's mast. Pirates or enemy ships often raised a different flag, wishing to get closer to the ship they wanted to capture.
The longest sea voyage in history was made by New York artist and traveler Reid Stowe. He spent 1,152 days at sea without setting foot on land or replenishing supplies aboard his 70-foot sailboat. His goal was to test the human ability to cope with the elements without outside help for 1,000 days (approximately the duration of a trip to Mars).

(Reid Stowe on the 743rd day)

The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility (49.0273° S, 123.4345° W) is the most remote place on Earth. This area is also known as Point Nemo and represents a large section of the southern Pacific Ocean between Easter Island and Antarctica. If you find yourself there, the closest people to you will be astronauts aboard the International Space Station when it passes overhead. Today, Point Nemo is used as a space graveyard.(Point "Nemo")

The shipping industry is unimaginable without container ships, yet this type of vessel appeared quite recently. The familiar container was invented by American businessman Malcolm McLean just over 60 years ago. He came up with the idea of transporting goods by sea directly on trucks, but he quickly realized that truck chassis took up a lot of useful space, and it would be more efficient to transport only "boxes," slightly adjusting the truck design to make the chassis suitable for removable containers.
Despite their American origin, today about 97% of all containers are produced in China. It's no surprise since almost all goods are manufactured there, but the volumes are still impressive.
The most popular color for shipping containers is green.
Each container tells its story:

Surprisingly, shipping a bicycle from China to the UK on a container ship costs only about 10 US dollars.
Transporting a can of soda over the same distance costs 0.01 US dollars.
Further still, it is cheaper to send cod caught in Scotland for processing in China and then return it back to the UK than to process the fish at its place of catch.
Customs services annually inspect only 2% to 10% of containers.
The largest container company in the world is Maersk. If its containers were lined up in a row, they would form a chain half the length of the equator.
A medium-sized container ship covers a distance from Earth to the Moon annually (384,400 km or 238,855 miles).

In October 2020, container turnover at Shanghai Port reached a record high of 43.3 million TEU (TEU or teu stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit), which is an increase of 15.7% compared to 2019. As of today, it is the largest port in the world.

(Shanghai Port. Container Terminal)

Ships arrive or depart from Singapore Port every 2-3 minutes.
The largest ship in the world as of 2025 remains FLNG Prelude. Its length is nearly 500 m, meaning its deck is larger than four football fields placed side by side. Additionally, its gas storage volume is approximately equivalent to that of 175 Olympic swimming pools.

(FLNG Prelude)

The strangest-looking ship in the world is Ramform Hyperion. This research vessel can tow high-tech sensors attached to its wide stern.

(Ramform Hyperion)

The largest cruise port in the world is Miami. It houses 11 cruise terminals. Most are owned by large cruise companies, including the largest cruise terminal in the USA (Terminal A), which was built to serve passengers of Royal Caribbean ships.
The most expensive ship in the world today is Symphony of the Seas, a luxury cruise liner by Royal Caribbean ($1.4 billion). Surprisingly, the new-generation ship The Wonder of the Seas, which became the largest cruise liner in the world, costs less - "only" $1.35 billion.

(Cruise liner Symphony of Seas)

These are just a few percent of implicit and interesting facts about maritime industry and global shipping that we can share with you...