Great Bitter Lake

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Great Bitter Lake

The Great Bitter Lake (; transliterated

Arabic transliteration

Different approaches and methods for the romanization of Arabic language exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and spoken Arabic in the Latin alphabet; they also use different symbols for Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English language or other European languages....
: al-Buhayrah al-Murra al-Kubra) is a salt water lake between the north and south part of the Suez Canal

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is a canal in Egypt. Opened in November 1869, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa or carrying goods overland between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea....
. It is adjoined by the Small Bitter Lake (Arabic: ??????? ????? ??????; transliterated: al-Buhayrah al-Murra as-Sughra). Together, the Bitter Lakes have a surface area of about 250 km². To the north, the canal also runs through Lake Manzala

Lake Manzala

Lake Manzala is a salt water lake in northeastern Egypt, near Port Said. It has an area of 1,360 km?....
and Lake Timsah.

As the canal has no locks, sea water flows freely into the lake from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
, replacing water lost to evaporation

Evaporation

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The Great Bitter Lake (; transliterated

Arabic transliteration

Suez Canal

Lake Manzala

Red Sea

Evaporation

Evaporation is the slow vaporization of a liquid and the reverse of condensation. A type of phase transition, it is the process by which molecules in a liquid State of matter spontaneously become gaseous ....
. The lake acts as a buffer for the canal, reducing the effect of tidal currents. Fish can migrate, generally in a northerly direction, through the canal and lakes in what is known as a Lessepsian migration. By this means some Red Sea species have come to to colonize the eastern Mediterranean.

On February 14, 1945, on the Great Bitter Lake, U.S. President

President of the United States

The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in the United States by influence and recognition....
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , often referred to by his initials FDR, was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States....
, having flown directly from the Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Order of the Garter, Order of Merit, Order of the Companions of Honour, Territorial Decoration, Fellow of the Royal Society, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Queen's Privy Council for Canada was a Politics of the United Kingdom known chiefly for his leadership of the United King...
and Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
, met on board the naval cruiser USS Quincy

USS Quincy (CA-71)

USS Quincy , a Baltimore class cruiser heavy cruiser of the United States Navy. She was the third ship to carry the name.Quincy was authorized on 17 June 1940; laid down by the Bethlehem Steel Company, Shipbuilding Division, Quincy, Massachusetts as St....
with Saudi Arabia's King Abdul Aziz. President Roosevelt's interpreter was U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Bill Eddy

William A. Eddy

William Alfred "Bill" Eddy was a U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia , university professor and college president , and United States Marine Corps officer—serving in World War I and World War II, and U.S....
who recorded the men's conversation in his book FDR Meets Ibn Saud.

During the Six-Day War

Six-Day War

In the Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967, Israel defeated the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In Arabic, the war is called ....
in 1967, the canal was closed, leaving 14 ships trapped in the lake until 1975. These ships became known as the "Yellow Fleet

Yellow Fleet

The Yellow Fleet was the name given to a group of fourteen ships trapped in the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975 as a result of the Six-Day War. The name derived from their yellow appearance as they were increasingly covered in desert sand swept onboard....
", because of the desert sands which soon covered their decks. A number of local postage stamp

Postage stamp

A postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for Mail services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery....
s (or rather, decorative labels, since they had no postal validity) were created by the crews, which are sought after by collectors.

External links

- the tale of a sailor of the MS Melampus, one of the ships trapped in the lake in 1967.