Geographical Superlatives

By Vlad Florea

For us, humans, it is very distinctive to want to know everything about anything. Curiosity defines us. Knowledge involves the access to information and, quite frequently, the data that we need is fragmented and hard to find fast enough, thus is not only a problem of convenience, but one of need. We need an easier access to a more useful and concise type of information. Starting with that ideea in my mind, I have tried to bring this e-book some of those characterisrics, including:
→Linked Table of Contents and Glosary
→Superlatives from all of the geographical fields
→Superlatives from the World and from the continents
→Alphabetical order of the facts
→Bolded most important details for fast reading and memorising
→Accurate and up-to-date data
→Both imperial and metric units of measure are used everywhere
All of the above in the hope of an enjoyable, fun and very educative reading, with maximum comfort and convenience.
As final words, I want to recommend this e-book to every person, no matter the age or occupation, because it is very useful for gathering general knowledge, obtaining grater marks at school, finding new and interesting places to visit and amaze yourself with the wonders of our World.
I wish you will have fun reading this e-book and that you will use your gained knowledge well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vlad Florea
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301792290

Vlad Florea

I am a young, enthuziast, independent writer which believes in quality over quantity. I am aiming to bring a benefit to the readers knowledge and mood.

Book preview

Do you know which is the largest volcano, the youngest island or the highest waterfall in the World? Do you know what a fjord, an aphelion or the permafrost is? Do you know which animal lives the most and that biological immortality exists?

Find out all of these and much more in the Geographical Superlatives e-book!

For us, humans, it is very distinctive to want to know everything about anything. Curiosity defines us. Knowledge involves the access to information and, quite frequently, the data that we need is fragmented and hard to find fast enough, thus is not only a problem of convenience, but one of need. We need an easier access to a more useful and concise type of information. Starting with that ideea in my mind, I have tried to bring this e-book some of those characterisrics, including:

-Linked Table of Contents and Glosary

-Superlatives from all of the geographical fields

-Superlatives from the World and from the continents

-Alphabetical order of the facts

-Bolded most important details for fast reading and memorising

-Accurate and up-to-date data

-Both imperial and metric units of measure are used everywhere

All of the above in the hope of an enjoyable, fun and very educative reading, with maximum comfort and convenience.

As final words, I want to recommend this e-book to every person, no matter the age or occupation, because it is very useful for gathering general knowledge, obtaining grater marks at school, finding new and interesting places to visit and amaze yourself with the wonders of our World.

I wish you will have fun reading this e-book and that you will use your gained knowledge well.

General Physical Geography

General Physical Geography is governed by natural laws and includes many sub-branches: geomorphology (general, climate, coastal, petrography, and structural), hydrology (oceanography, potamology, telmatology, limnology, hydrogeography, and hydrochemistry), meteorology, climatology, biogeography, (zoography and phytology), pedology, environmental geography.

General Physical Geography Superlatives

Alfred Lothar Wegener theorized continental drift based on coincidence shoreline on both sides of the Atlantic, and on similar animal and vegetal formations. Alfred Lothar Wegener was born on first of November 1880 in Berlin and died in 1930 in Greenland. He was a German meteorologist, who had researched the poles and Earth Sciences.

Andromeda, located about 2.9 million light years is the nearest large galaxy near us.

Arista of Samos (310-230 B.C.) was the first man who assumed the two movements of the Earth: rotation and revolution.

Comets are named after their discoverers. In 1985 Comet Halley was observed, which is only visible to earthlings once every 76 years.

Earth’s crust or the lithosphere (Greek lithos=rock) is the most outer and thinner layer of the Earth (40 kilometers or 25 miles thick). The crust has a thickness ranging from 30 to 60 kilometers or from 19 to 38 miles, and it is composed of crystalline rocks with representants from quartz and metal oxides.

Eratosthenes (275-195 B.C.) was the first to calculate, with a remarkable precision for those times, the circumference of the Earth.

Hayden Planetarium from New York is the museum where a meteorite made entirely of iron is exposed. The meteorite has a weight of 30,880 kg or 68,080 lbs. and it was discovered by the American explorer Robert Edwin Peary, in Greenland. Each year, 1,000 tons of cosmic dust falls on Earth.

Hoba West is the largest known meteorite (as a single piece) and the most massive naturally occurring piece of iron known at the Earth’s surface. The meteorite lies on the farm Hoba West, not far from Grootfontein, in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia. It has been uncovered, but because of its large mass has never been moved from where it fell. The main mass is estimated at more than 60 tons.

Jupiter is the largest planet of the solar system and is 1,300 times larger than Earth. It is a gas giant which main composition is hydrogen and helium and represents 70% of the solar system planets mass. The planet has 16 moons and 4 of them were discovered by Galileo Galilei in the year 1610 B.C.

Kiria is a province of China where the biggest meteorite rain fell on 8 of March 1976. Among the 2,700 kg or 6,000 lbs. of meteorite remains, the largest single piece had 1,770 kg or 3,900 lbs.

Magellan (1480-1521 A.D.) is the first one who proves practically the sphericity of the Earth, by traveling around the Globe, heading only west.

Mercury is the closest planet to our Sun. It has the shortest year in the Solar System (only 88 days), this being the time it takes to complete a full rotation around the Sun. Being the closest planet to the Sun, it has the highest temperature of over 430 °C or 800 °F; it has no natural satellites and no atmosphere; the sunlight reaches Mercury in only 3 minutes and 13 seconds.

Milky Way is the home galaxy of our solar system and roughly 200 billion other stars and their planets and over 1,000 nebula. Our galaxy is part of a group of 3 large galaxies and a number of 30 other smaller galaxies, being the second largest after the Andromeda (M31) galaxy.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 A.D.) was the first to say that the Earth is moving around the Sun.

Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain from our solar system. It has a height of 22 kilometers or 14 miles and it is on Mars.

Pilnitz is a city near Dresda, where it is exhibited the oldest meteorite on Earth.

Precambrian era was the longest (about 4 billion years) in the Earth’s development. In this period, the Earth’s crust had individualized and the first forms of life had emerged.

Proxima Centauri is the nearest star from Earth at 4.2 light-years away.

Pythagoras (550-500 B.C) was the first to say that the Earth is round.

Quaternary (2.6 million years) is the last and most important era in the evolution of the Earth because it’s the period when the humans emerged.

Russia is the country with the most time zones (11) because it has the largest longitudinal span.

Saturn is the planet of our solar system with the most moons (18).

South Pole does not have sunlight for 182 day per year and the North Pole for 176 days per year; the poles are the darkest places on Earth, judging by this fact.

The 60° parallel south latitude goes around the Earth without ever being on land.

The aphelion is the farthest point of the Earth from the Sun (152 million kilometer or 95 million miles from the Sun). The difference between the aphelion and the perihelion, of 5 million kilometers or 3.1 million miles, is 13 times greater that the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

The Diamond is the hardest mineral. Its name comes from the ancient Greek αδάμας – adámas which means unbreakable. There are over 4,000 known types of minerals.

The Equator is the longest parallel on Earth. Its theoretical length is 40,074 kilometers or 25,046 miles.

The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. A man who weighs 60 kg or 132 lbs. on Earth, weights 10 kg or 22 lbs. on the Moon. The mountains on the Moon are named after Earth’s mountains: Alps, Caucasus etc.

The Moon is the brightest thing on the sky (excepting the Sun).

The oceanic trenches are the deepest sectors on the Earth. They represent 1% of the Earth’s surface and are located in subduction zones with a greater spread in the Pacific Ocean.

The oldest rocks on Earth are 3.8 billion years old and were found in Africa, Greenland and Australia.

The oldest written record of an eclipse is on a Chinese writing from 4,100 years ago.

The oxygen is the main chemical element on Earth, its percentage being 47%, followed by silicon 28%.

The prime meridian or Greenwich meridian is the most important meridian, because the standard time zones are calculated relative to it. This meridian divides the Earth into 2 equally hemispheres (east and west hemispheres) and it passes through Greenwich (England) and many countries on the north hemisphere but none from south hemisphere.

The Sun is the largest heavenly body in the solar system. It has 99% of the solar system’s mass and a gravitational force 25 times stronger than Earth’s.

Uranus is the planet with the most rings (19). The rings are composed of gas, dust, rocks and ice.

Venus is the only planet that rotates counter-clockwise around its axis. On Venus, the Sun rises at west and sets at east.

Vredefort crater is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, with a diameter of 300 kilometers or 190 miles and an estimated age of 2,000 million years. It is located in the Free State