40 Fun Facts About Valleys

Valles Marineris, the largest known canyon system in the Solar System at over 4,000 km long, lies on which planet?

Mars has a canyon up to 7 km deep, named Valles Marineris after Mariner 9, the orbiter that discovered it in the early 1970s.

Which extinct human relatives are named after a valley in Germany where a fossil was found in 1856?

Neanderthals are named after the Neander Valley, where the fossil surfaced three years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

Which creamy salad dressing was first sold to guests at Hidden Valley, Steve Henson's California guest property?

Ranch began as a recipe Henson mixed for his work crews while he was a plumbing contractor; guests liked it so much that they bought jars to take home.

Which continent is slowly splitting in two along a rift valley, at a rate of a few millimetres a year?

Africa is tearing along the East African Rift, where the continent's plate is dividing into the Somali and Nubian plates at 8–9 mm a year.

Whose treasure-filled tomb did Howard Carter's team discover in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in 1922?

Tutankhamun was robbed twice soon after his burial, yet his mummy and most of the grave goods stayed intact for more than 3,000 years.

What carves a valley into a U shape, with steep, straight sides and a wide, flat floor?

A glacier scours rock away across its whole width as it grinds downhill, while a river cuts a narrower, V-shaped notch.

Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, lies in which national park?

Death Valley also holds the record for the hottest air temperature ever measured: 134 °F (56.7 °C), logged at Furnace Creek in July 1913.

How Green Was My Valley, John Ford's drama about a mining family, beat which classic to the Best Picture Oscar?

Citizen Kane is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made, yet it lost on Oscar night to a film that took five awards, including Best Director.

Which currency's name comes from Joachimsthal, a Bohemian valley where silver coins were minted in the 1500s?

Dollar descends from Joachimsthaler, the coin's full name, which was shortened to thaler and became daler in Low German before reaching English.

California's Central Valley grows about 80% of the world's supply of which nut?

Almonds thrive there thanks to mild weather, rich soil and steady sunshine, and just four counties grow most of the state's crop.

Which river carved the Grand Canyon, cutting more than a mile down through nearly two billion years of rock?

The Colorado settled into its course there about five to six million years ago and has been deepening and widening the canyon ever since.

Silicon Valley, the tech region south of San Francisco, is named after the silicon used to make what?

Computer chips gave the region its name, popularised by journalist Don Hoefler; before the tech boom it was known as the Valley of Heart's Delight.

El Capitan and Half Dome are granite giants towering over the valley floor of which California national park?

Yosemite visitors spend most of their time in just seven square miles of valley, a tiny slice of the whole park.

Which Nordic country has nearly 1,200 fjords, steep-sided valleys that are now flooded by the sea?

Norway's coastline measures about 29,000 km when the fjords are counted and only 2,500 km without them.

Which salt lake in the Jordan Rift Valley has the lowest shores of any land on Earth?

The Dead Sea is also about 9.6 times as salty as the ocean, which makes swimming in it feel more like floating.

The San Fernando Valley, known to locals simply as "the Valley", lies mostly within which US city?

Los Angeles governs most of it, though Burbank and the city of San Fernando are separate, and San Fernando is completely surrounded by its giant neighbour.

Which general led about 12,000 Continental Army soldiers into winter quarters at Valley Forge in 1777?

George Washington lost an estimated 1,700 to 2,000 soldiers to disease during the encampment, made worse by hunger and cold, wet weather.

Monument Valley's sandstone buttes, seen in many classic Westerns, lie on which Native American people's land?

The Navajo consider the place sacred, and their own name for it means "valley of the rocks".

Which Russian lake, the deepest in the world at 1,642 metres, fills a rift valley that is still pulling apart?

Baikal holds more than a fifth of the world's fresh surface water, more than all of North America's Great Lakes combined.

The Kathmandu Valley, a bowl-shaped Himalayan basin listed as a World Heritage Site, is the heart of which country?

Nepal's capital sits in the basin, which is also known as the Nepal Valley and holds the country's largest urban area.

The Loire Valley, nicknamed the Garden of France, is famous for more than three hundred of which buildings?

Châteaux sprang up along the Loire when French kings built there and the nobility, not wanting to be far from the seat of power, followed suit.

At the 1976 Judgment of Paris blind tasting, wines from which California region beat France's finest?

Napa Valley wines were rated best in both the red and the white category, a shock to organiser Steven Spurrier, a British merchant who sold mainly French wine.

What often spills from the mouth of a hanging valley, a side valley perched high above the main one?

A waterfall forms because the tributary cut a shallower trough than the main valley, leaving its mouth stranded high up the wall.

Where are the McMurdo Dry Valleys, a nearly snow-free cold desert that scientists compare to another planet?

Antarctica's Dry Valleys stay bare because fierce katabatic winds scour away snowfall and moisture, making them one of the driest places on Earth.

Which US president signed the 1933 act that set up the Tennessee Valley Authority to dam rivers and supply electricity?

Franklin Roosevelt made the agency a core part of his New Deal; the region had suffered even deeper poverty in the Great Depression than the rest of the country.

Stardew Valley, built by Eric Barone alone over five years, began as a fan-made alternative to which older series?

Harvest Moon's own creator praised Stardew Valley, which sold more than a million copies within two months of release.

Tennyson's poem about the Light Brigade charging into a deadly valley describes an 1854 battle in which war?

The Crimean War charge at Balaclava cost the British cavalry many casualties, and the poem was published just six weeks later.

In the Scottish Highlands, which word from Gaelic names a long, deep valley that is narrower than a strath?

Glen comes from the Gaelic gleann, meaning a deep valley, and it begins many Scottish place names.

Which ancient region in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys has a Greek name meaning the land between rivers?

Mesopotamia is called a cradle of civilisation: cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems, emerged in its cities.

In which country can you walk through a rift valley between the North American and Eurasian plates at Thingvellir?

Iceland's parliament, the Althing, was founded on the same spot in 930 and went on meeting there until 1798.

Mohenjo-daro, an ancient Indus Valley city with covered street drains, lies in which modern country?

Pakistan's Sindh province holds the ruins, whose name means Mound of the Dead Men; one building even had an underground furnace, possibly for heated baths.

Which hole-filled cheese takes its name from a river valley in Switzerland where it was first made?

Emmental owes its holes to tiny specks of hay dust in the milk, which give the gas released by bacteria a place to gather.

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, buried in ash by the 1912 Novarupta eruption, lies in which US state?

Alaska's ash-filled valley was named in 1916 by explorer Robert Griggs, who saw thousands of steam vents smoking; most are now extinct.

Which Arabic word names a desert valley or riverbed that holds water only after heavy rain?

Wadi also hides in Spanish place names: Guadalajara and Guadalquivir both come from Arabic names built on the word.

Valley fever, an illness named after California's San Joaquin Valley, is caused by what kind of organism?

A fungus called Coccidioides lives in the soil there, and people usually catch the illness by breathing in spores stirred up with the dust.

Which ski invention made its world debut at Sun Valley, Idaho, a resort then owned by the Union Pacific Railroad?

Chairlift designer James Curran borrowed the idea from conveyors that loaded bananas onto cargo ships, swapping the hooks for chairs.

Which geology term, from the German for ditch, names the sunken block of land that can form a rift valley?

Graben usually drop between two parallel faults; when only one side has a major fault, geologists call the lopsided result a half-graben.

The Valley of Geysers, home to the world's second-largest concentration of geysers, lies in which part of Russia?

Kamchatka's geyser basin is only six kilometres long yet holds about ninety geysers, heated by a young volcano.

The Western Cwm on Mount Everest, named by George Mallory in 1921, uses the word for valley from which language?

Welsh cwm means a valley fully enclosed by mountains, and Mallory chose it during the first expedition to explore Everest's upper slopes.

Which desert city's metropolitan area is nicknamed the Valley of the Sun?

Phoenix and its neighbours fill the Salt River Valley, and locals simply call the whole area the Valley.