Geography
Some Atacama weather stations have never recorded rain
Parts of Chile's Atacama are the driest non-polar place on Earth, with soils so dry they are used to test Mars rovers.
More in Geography
Angel Falls is so tall the water never lands
Venezuela's Angel Falls drops 979 metres — so far that much of the water turns to mist before it reaches the bottom, especially in the dry season.
Mount Everest grows a few millimetres every year
The Indian plate keeps pushing into Asia, lifting the Himalayas roughly 4 mm a year — faster than erosion can wear them down.
The Dead Sea shore is the lowest land on Earth
At about 430 metres below sea level, its shoreline is the lowest exposed land anywhere — and it keeps dropping as the lake shrinks.
One lake holds a fifth of Earth's fresh surface water
Siberia's Lake Baikal is over 1,600 m deep and contains about 20% of all unfrozen freshwater on the planet.
Everest would still be underwater in the Mariana Trench
The Challenger Deep reaches nearly 11 km down — over 2 km deeper than Everest is tall.
Iceland is being torn in two
The island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so North America and Eurasia pull apart beneath it by about 2 cm every year.