Geography Facts for Kids
Cool facts about our planet
Mount Olympus in Greece is the country's highest mountain at nearly 3,000 metres. Ancient Greeks believed it was the home of their gods, including Zeus, because its peak was always hidden in clouds.
New Zealand's East Cape is one of the first places in the world to see the sunrise each day. The country sits so far east in the Pacific that it welcomes the new day before almost anywhere else on Earth.
The Atacama Desert in South America is the driest non-polar desert on Earth. Some weather stations there have never recorded a single drop of rain in all the years they have been operating.
About one-quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level. The Dutch have built an extraordinary system of dykes and pumps to keep the ocean out and their land dry for centuries.
The Great Rift Valley in East Africa is slowly tearing the African continent in two. Over tens of millions of years, a new ocean will form where the rift now cuts through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is Africa's tallest mountain and sits right near the equator, yet its peak is covered in snow and ice. However, its glaciers have shrunk by more than 80% in the past 100 years.
The city of Istanbul in Turkey is the only major city in the world that straddles two continents. Part of the city lies in Europe and the other part lies in Asia, separated by the Bosphorus strait.
The Nile River flows northward, which surprises many people because we often assume rivers flow south. It travels from the highlands of Central Africa all the way to the Mediterranean Sea in the north.
Antarctica has active volcanoes hiding beneath its ice. Mount Erebus is the world's southernmost active volcano and has had a rare lava lake bubbling in its crater for decades.
The Amazon Rainforest is so large that it creates its own weather system. The trees release so much moisture that they generate their own rain clouds, in what scientists call 'flying rivers.'