| Geography Facts |
| 1.Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, actually has 2 peaks. They are about 7 miles, or 11 kilometers, apart. The taller one, named Kibo, is 5,895 feet. The shorter one, named Mawensi, is 5,149 feet. So when you see the height of Kilimanjaro, it'll say 5,895 feet, for the peak of Kibo, the taller one. 2.The Caspian Sea, is actually a lake. It was mistakenly called that because it is landlocked. 3.Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall, located in Venezuela, South America, was discovered in 1935 by American James C. Angels, at 3,212 feet (979 meters). The water on its first drop falls 2,648 feet, and falls 564 feet on its second drop. The mountain in which the waterfall begins is Mount Anyantepui. 4.The first people to climb Mount Everest was Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953. 5.The youngest person to climb Mount Everest is Sambu Tamang on May 5, 1973, at the age of 16. 6.The first woman to climb Mount Everest is Junko Tabei on May 16, 1975. Notice these 3 dates all took place in the month of May. 7.Mount Everest in Nepal is called Sagarmatha, meaning Goddess of the sky. 8.Mount Everest for the Tibetans is called Chomolungma, meaning Mother Goddess of the Universe. 9.The state Hawaii, has it's own state fish, called the humuhumunukunukupuaa. 10.The Mississippi River, that ends in the Gulf of Mexico, starts at Lake Itaska in Minnesota, U.S.A.. 11.Only 1/5th, or 20%, of all the worlds frontier forests going back to 8,000 years remain undestroyed today. 12.Mount Everest was named after Sir George Everest. who was the first person to accurately survey the peak's height. 13.New Zealand was named after Abel Tasman's home district, Zealand, in the Netherlands. 14.While the Great Lakes Michigan and Huron are widely considered to be 2 separate lakes, in hydrological terms they are one lake joined by a 120 foot deep channel known as the Straits of Mackinac. 15.The Nile river flows north. 16.The total weight of the world's oceans make up about 0.022% of the weight of the entire Earth. 17.The world's warmest sea is the Red Sea. 18.There is a city called Rome on every continent of the world. 19.The state of Idaho has it's own state horse called the spotted Appaloosa. 20.The state of Wyoming has it's own state dinosaur: the triceratops. 21.The fastest glacier ever recorded goes to the Kutiah in Pakistan. 22.Tropical rain forests cover more than 2 billion acres (0.8 billion hectares), or about 7% of the Earths land surface. 23.The smallest island in the world is Bishop Rock, near Great Britain. It only contains a lighthouse. 24.The first person to swim across the English Channel was a British Sea Captain named Mathew Webb in 1875 (August 25), which took 21 hours and 45 seconds. 25.The first time humans first been on the South Pole is in December 14, 1911. 26.The African country of Zambia and Zimbabwe used to be one country named Rhodesia, which was named after Cecil Rhodes, an Englishman who encouraged the European whites to settle in Africa. Today, Northern Rhodesia is Zambia and Southern Rhodesia is Zimbabwe. 27.St. Petersburg, a city in Russia, was built by the Russian czar Peter the Great. Its name was changed to Petrograd. Then along came Lenin, a leader of the revolution and overpowered the Russian czars, so the city's name was changed again to Leningrad. Then in 1991 it was changed back to St. Petersburg. 28.The African countries Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to become one country, Tanzania. 29.The fiddle is the official music instrument of the U.S. state Arkansas. 30.The biggest iceberg ever seen, known as "B-15," split off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in March 2000. Before it broke into smaller pieces, B-15 was 170 miles long and 25 miles wide (about the size of the state of Connecticut). It weighed an estimated 4 trillion (4,000,000,000,000) tons. 31.The saltiest ocean is the Atlantic Ocean. 32.About 97.25% percent of the world's water is salt water. 33.The country of South Africa has two official national anthems. 34.More than 25 percent of the world's forest are in Siberia. 35.The city of Rome has more wild cats per square mile than any other city in the world. 36. The deepest part of the ocean floor is in the Pacific Ocean, called the Marianas Trench. It is 35,797 feet deep (10,911 meters). It was surveyed by the Japanese probe Kaiko in March 24, 1995 to have been the most accurate depth to date. 37.U.S. state Minnesota, known as "Land of 10,000 lakes," actually has 11,842 lakes. 38.There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong. In 1990, the population was only twenty-two people. 39.It is possible to sail around the world at Latitude 60 degrees south. 40.The sea level is not always the same. 18,000 years ago during the last ice age, the word's oceans were 330 feet (100 meters) lower than they are today. 41.There are more countries in the Northern Hemisphere then the south. 42.Tasmania has the cleanest air in the inhabited world. 43.The first city to reach one million people in the world is Baghdad. It was the largest city during the years 775 - 935. 44.The national flower of Greenland is the Willow herb. 45.The number of births in India each year is greater than the entire population of Australia. 46.The Sahara desert is expanding half a mile south every year. 47.In 1996, scientists using radar discovered Lake Vostok beneath 12,000 feet of ice in Antarctica. Roughly 140 miles long, 30 miles wide, and 3,000 feet deep, Vostok is the largest unfrozen lake found under the ice sheets. 48.There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia. 49.Emilio Marco Palma was the first person born in Antarctica in 1978. 50.The weight of the world's oceans is 145 million tons. 51.All the waters surrounded Pangaea, were called Panthalassa. 52.It has never rained in Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. 53.In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979 that snow fell on the Sahara Desert. 54.The South Pole has no sunshine for 182 days a year. 55.Though the North Pole is warmer, it has no sunshine for 176 days a year. 56.The total water content of the world's oceans would take one million years to be cycled through the atmosphere as part of the water cycle. 57.Equatorial Guinea is the only country in Africa with Spanish as its official language. 58.The country of Zaire since 1971 has been renamed the Congo (Democratic Republic of) in 1997 by Laurent Kabila when he became in power. 59.Nine-tenths of the world's ice is in Antarctica. 60.The world's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. 61.Africa's Lake Chad has shrunk from a surface of about 10,000 square miles (25,000 square kilometers), in 1963 to 839 square miles (1,350 square kilometers) today, due to devastating droughts and increased human demand for water. 62.Taiwan's first national park was Kenting, located at Taiwan's southermost tip, was first opened in 1984. It conatins Taiwan's only tropical area. 63.Indonesia is the world's biggest archipelago with 17,508 islands. 64.70.78% percent of the world's surface is water. 65.29.92% percent of the world's surface is land. 66.Niagara Falls are moving upstream toward Lake Erie at the rate of 300 feet per century. Geologists have calculated that in 25,000 years there will no longer be a falls. Lake Erie will drain out. 67.The first person to sail around the world by himself was Joshua Slocum. He left Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on July 2, 1895 and landed in Newport, R.I. on July 3, 1898. 68.The largest lake in a lake is Manitou Lake in Manitou Island in Lake Huron. 69.The official state rock of Rhode Island is the cumberlandite, since 1966. 70.Ireland's name of the 3 Aran Islands are Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. 71.There is a town in Sweden called "A" and a town in France called "Y." 72.The country with the most volcanoes is Indonesia. 73.The exact geographical South Pole shifts about 30 feet per year. 74.Dave Kunst was the first man to walk around the world. He started in Waseca, Minnesota on June 20, 1970 and completed the journey in 4 years, 3 months and 16 days. He wore out 21 pairs of shoes in more than 20 million steps to cover 23,250 km (14,450 miles). 75.The only country that is also a continent, or the only continent that is also a country, is Australia. 76.The point where the U.S. states Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, being the only point in the U.S. where you can be in all 4 states, is 37 degrees 00 North and 109 degrees 00 West. 77.A stream on Nevado Mismi, an 18,363 foot peak in Southern Peru, is the source of the Amazon River. A National Geographic team using satellite navigation equipment solved the 300 year old mystery in 2000. 78.The Northern hemisphere is about 60.7% water and 39.3% land. 79.The Southern hemisphere is about 80.9% water and 19.1% land. 80.The volume of the ocean is about 1.37 billion cubic kilometers. 81.About 10.4% percent of the Earth's land surface is permanently covered with ice (glaciated). 82.The ice that covers Antarctica at it's thickest point is 15,669 feet (4,776 meters) deep. 83.The deepest point in the Caspian Sea is 3,360 feet (1,025 meters) deep. The surface is 93 feet (28.5 meters) below sea level. 84.The least saltiest ocean is the Arctic Ocean. 85.The world's largest forest is located in northern Russia, lying between 55 ° North and the Arctic Circle, covering a total area of about 2.7 billion acres. It is a coniferous forest. 86.The highest ocean temperature ever recorded was at 759 degress Fahrenheit (404 degrees Celsius) measured above a hydrothermal vent in 1985 in the Pacific Ocean. 87.The world's longest fjord is the Nordvest Fjord arm of Scoresby Sund in eastern Greenland, which extends inland at 195 miles (313 kilometers) from the sea. |
Geography ---------------- |
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