Geography — Page 5
Wonders of our planet
220 facts
Egypt has more pyramids than Sudan.
Sudan has about 200 pyramids, more than Egypt's roughly 140. The pyramids of Meroe, built by the Kingdom of Kush, are…
Hawaii is the southernmost state in the United States.
Hawaii is the southernmost state in the United States. It stretches for 2,400 kilometres in the Pacific and is the…
Mount Everest is shrinking in height because of erosion.
Mount Everest is growing by about 4 millimetres per year due to the movement of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic…
The Caspian Sea is the largest lake in the world.
Despite its name, the Caspian Sea is technically a lake, because it has no connection to the ocean. With about…
Africa is the only continent located in all four hemispheres.
Africa is the only continent in the world that extends across the northern, southern, eastern and western…
Sweden has more than 267,000 islands.
Sweden has more than 267,000 registered islands, the highest number in the world. Most are small and uninhabited, but…
Mount Thor in Canada has the largest vertical drop in the world.
Mount Thor, located in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island, has a rock face with a vertical drop of about 1,250…
Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited place in the world.
Tristan da Cunha, a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, is 2,400 kilometres from the nearest mainland. It has…
The deepest hole ever drilled by humans is in Russia and is about 12 kilometres deep.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole, on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, was drilled between 1970 and 1989 and reached about…
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world by area and population.
Vatican City has only 0.44 square kilometres and about 800 inhabitants, making it the smallest country in the world…
On the island of Socotra there are trees that bleed when cut.
The Dracaena cinnabari, or dragon's blood tree, is native to the island of Socotra, in Yemen. When the bark is cut…
The Giant s Causeway is a man-made rock formation.
The Giant s Causeway, in Northern Ireland, is a natural formation of about 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns, created…
The Richat Structure in Mauritania is visible from space and looks like a giant eye.
The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is a circular geological formation about 40 kilometres in…
The Moeraki Boulders were carved by humans.
The Moeraki Boulders in New Zealand are natural stone spheres up to 2 metres in diameter, formed by calcite and clay…
Svalbard is the northernmost inhabited place in the world.
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, about 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole. Its main town…
The Atacama Desert is the driest in the world.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest non-polar desert in the world. Some weather stations in the region have…
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean, between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Its main…
The Danakil Depression is one of the hottest places on Earth.
The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia has average annual temperatures of 34.4 degrees Celsius and has reached over 50…
Bouvet Island is a territory of Denmark.
Bouvet Island is a territory of Norway, located in the South Atlantic, about 2,400 kilometres from the nearest…
The level of the Dead Sea is dropping about one metre per year.
The level of the Dead Sea is dropping about one metre per year, due to water extraction from the Jordan River and…
The Mediterranean Sea has always had its current extent.
About 5.6 million years ago, the Mediterranean almost completely dried up in an event known as the Messinian salinity…
The Nile is one of the two longest rivers in the world.
The Nile, which crosses northeastern Africa, is about 6,650 kilometres long and disputes with the Amazon the title of…
Hawaii has an explosive cone-shaped volcano.
Hawaii's volcanoes are shield type, with gentle, broad slopes formed by very fluid lava. They are not conical or…
The Dead Sea is technically a lake.
The Dead Sea, between Israel and Jordan, is actually a salt lake with no outlet to the sea. With about 9.6 times more…