The MSC Oscar, launched earlier this month, has the greatest capacity of any container ship on the planet. It can carry over 19,200 20-foot shipping containers. That’s enough space for 117 million pairs of sneakers. But it probably won’t hold the title for long: For the last several years, the record has been broken every year.

To understand how container ships got so huge, you have to go back 60 years, when overseas shipping was so cumbersome and expensive that many companies simply chose not to try. The video above explains the origins of the container ship and how they drastically changed the world.

Read the article “How Cargo Ships Got Huge and Transformed the World Economy” on vox.com.