60 Fun Facts About Waterfalls

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, is in which country?

It pours off the Auyán-tepui table mountain in Canaima National Park.

How tall is Angel Falls?

Its single uninterrupted plunge is 807 metres; the official height came from a 1949 survey funded by journalist Ruth Robertson.

Angel Falls is named after Jimmie Angel, who was what?

He flew over the falls in 1933 and in 1937 crash-landed his plane on top of the tepui trying to find gold.

Angel Falls was the main inspiration for Paradise Falls in which 2009 Pixar film?

In 2009 Hugo Chávez also proposed renaming the falls with their indigenous Pemon name, Kerepakupai-Merú.

Which waterfall in Laos is the widest in the world, at over 10 kilometres across?

Its islands and channels give the area its name Si Phan Don, 'the 4,000 islands'; the falls stop boats reaching China up the Mekong.

Which river is home to the Inga Falls, the biggest waterfall in the world by flow rate?

Its median discharge is 42,000 cubic metres a second, but many geographers class it as rapids rather than a true waterfall.

The largest waterfall on Earth by volume is actually underwater; where is it?

Cold, dense water plunges some 3,500 metres, moving about 3.2 million cubic metres a second, far more than the Amazon.

Which Washington state waterfall, though it no longer flows, is the largest confirmed waterfall ever?

It was carved by the catastrophic Ice Age Missoula floods.

Niagara Falls is a group of how many waterfalls?

One of them straddles the border, while the American and Bridal Veil falls lie in New York.

Which of the Niagara cataracts is the largest, the one that straddles the Canada–US border?

It stands about 57 metres high; boulders at the base of the American Falls cut its drop to as little as 21 metres.

Niagara Falls is formed by the Niagara River draining which of the Great Lakes into Ontario?

The combined falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America.

Who became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, on 24 October 1901?

The 63-year-old Michigan schoolteacher survived bleeding but otherwise unhurt, and made almost no money from the stunt.

Which French tightrope walker first crossed the Niagara Gorge on a wire in June 1859?

He repeated the crossing eight more times that year, once carrying his manager on his back.

In 2012 which high-wire artist became the first in 116 years to walk across the Niagara Falls area?

He needed special permission from both the US and Canadian governments.

What did engineers do to the American Falls at Niagara in June 1969?

A temporary rock-and-earth dam turned the falls off for several months so the rock face could be studied.

The only recorded complete stoppage of Niagara Falls happened in March 1848; what caused it?

American Falls froze solid on its own in 1912, but the other two kept flowing.

Since hydro diversion slowed its flow, how fast has Niagara Falls eroded upstream?

Historically it retreated 1 to 1.5 metres a year; since hydroelectric diversion reduced the flow, the rate has been roughly 30 centimetres a year.

Victoria Falls lies on which river, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe?

Its Lozi name Mosi-oa-Tunya means 'the smoke that thunders'.

Which Scottish missionary named Victoria Falls after the queen in 1855?

He first saw them from an island in mid-river that now bears his name.

Victoria Falls is often ranked first among the world's waterfalls on what basis?

It is 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high.

What is the 'Devil's Pool' on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls?

It sits at the tip of Livingstone Island and can be swum in low-water months.

Iguazu Falls sits on the border between which two countries?

Most of the roughly 275 individual falls are on the Argentine side.

What is the name of the long, narrow chasm into which about half of the Iguazu River plunges?

Garganta del Diablo is 80 to 90 metres wide and up to 80 metres deep.

Which US First Lady reportedly exclaimed 'Poor Niagara!' on seeing Iguazu Falls?

Niagara, at about 50 metres, is roughly a third shorter.

The name Iguazu comes from Guarani words meaning what?

The Spanish conquistador Cabeza de Vaca was the first European to record the falls, in 1541.

Tugela Falls, by some measurements the world's tallest waterfall, is in which country?

A 2016 Czech expedition measured its five leaps at 983 metres, above Angel Falls' official 979.

Yosemite Falls, one of the tallest in North America, drops a total of how far from top to base?

The upper fall alone plunges 1,430 feet; in most years the falls dry up entirely by late summer.

Kaieteur Falls, one of the world's most powerful single-drop waterfalls, is in which country?

It drops 226 metres over a sandstone cliff on the Potaro River and was reported to Europeans by geologist Charles Barrington Brown in 1870.

Gullfoss, on Iceland's most popular tourist circuit, has a name meaning what?

Farmer's daughter Sigríður Tómasdóttir is credited with saving it from a hydroelectric scheme, reportedly threatening to throw herself in.

Which Icelandic waterfall appears in the opening scene of Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus'?

It is fed by the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river flowing off the Vatnajökull glacier.

According to legend, a Viking settler named Þrasi buried a treasure chest behind which Icelandic waterfall?

Locals supposedly found the chest but could only grasp its ring before it vanished; the spray throws up rainbows on sunny days.

What can visitors do at Seljalandsfoss in Iceland that makes it unusual?

The 60-metre fall is fed by meltwater from the volcano Eyjafjallajökull.

Which waterfall near Schaffhausen is the most powerful in Europe?

It is 150 metres wide but only 23 metres high, and flow reaches 600 cubic metres a second in summer.

The Marmore Falls in Italy, the tallest man-made waterfall in the world, were created by whom?

Consul Manius Curius Dentatus had a canal cut to drain stagnant marshes near Rieti; the falls are 165 metres tall.

The Krimml Waterfalls, 380 metres over several stages, are the highest in which country?

They tumble down the Krimmler Ache valley in the Hohe Tauern range.

Plitvice Lakes National Park, a chain of tufa lakes linked by waterfalls, is in which country?

Founded in 1949, it was inscribed by UNESCO in 1979.

Huangguoshu, China's largest waterfall, is in which province?

It is about 78 metres high and 101 metres wide, on the Liuzhi River near Anshun.

Ban Gioc–Detian Falls straddle the border between which two countries?

They rank fourth among waterfalls on national borders, after Iguazu, Victoria and Niagara.

The Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia are known in Amharic as Tis Abay, meaning what?

Since 2003 a hydroelectric station has taken most of the flow outside the rainy season.

Nohkalikai Falls, India's tallest plunge waterfall at 340 metres, is near Cherrapunji in which state?

Cherrapunji, now Sohra, is one of the wettest places on Earth.

Jog Falls, one of India's most famous, splits into four cascades known as Raja, Roarer, Rocket and what?

The Sharavati River plunges about 253 metres in the state of Karnataka.

Multnomah Falls, the tallest waterfall in Oregon at 620 feet, is in which scenic area?

It spans two tiers on basalt cliffs, with the Benson footbridge crossing between them.

Havasu Falls in the Grand Canyon owes its vivid blue-green colour to what?

The same mineral builds the natural travertine dams around the falls; visitors need a Havasupai permit.

Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in Idaho is nicknamed what?

At 212 feet it is actually 45 feet higher than Niagara.

Why did the Guaíra Falls on the Paraná, once among the world's biggest, disappear in 1982?

They lay on the Brazil–Paraguay border and were completely submerged by the new lake.

Celilo Falls, a tribal salmon-fishing site on the Columbia River, was submerged in 1957 by which dam?

Celilo had been the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America.

Sutherland Falls, one of New Zealand's tallest at 580 metres, drains which lake near Milford Sound?

It falls in a series of cascades and was first seen by Europeans in 1880 by Scottish settler Donald Sutherland.

Wallaman Falls, Australia's tallest single-drop waterfall at 268 metres, is in which state?

It sits in the UNESCO-listed Wet Tropics near Ingham.

The northern English and Scandinavian waterfall word 'foss' or 'force' comes from which language?

Hence the many Icelandic names ending in -foss, and England's High Force.

What do geographers call the perched glacial troughs from which Yosemite's big waterfalls spill?

A tributary glacier cuts less deeply than the main one, so its stream is left with a cliff to fall over once the ice is gone.

Under Mabin's 2000 definition, a waterfall's lip-to-pool distance should be at most what fraction of its height?

Anything more spread out starts to look like rapids rather than a fall.

Which 12-foot waterfall in Newington, Connecticut is claimed to be the smallest natural one in the US?

Definitions usually demand a drop of at least five feet, though some sources insist on 20 feet.

What is the local erosion process in which whirlpools spin stones to drill holes in bedrock below a falls?

Sand and stones carried by the water boost its erosive power, making the waterfall carve deeper and recede upstream.

Which two bird species preferentially nest in the space behind falling water?

The behaviour is thought to be a strategy to avoid predators; waterfalls also create cool, humid microclimates rich in mosses and liverworts.

Which waterfall in Guadeloupe did Columbus note in 1493, likely the first Europeans recorded in the Americas?

Louis Hennepin later gave early descriptions of Niagara and Saint Anthony Falls in the late 1600s.

In what year were the Gocta Cataracts first announced to the world?

Exploration continues even now; some formerly colonised countries are restoring indigenous names to renamed falls.

Which Japanese waterfall is a site of Shinto pilgrimage, linked to the purification rite of misogi?

One form of misogi involves standing beneath a waterfall in ritual clothing; Saut-d'Eau in Haiti is another pilgrimage falls.

How many World Heritage Sites include waterfalls?

Many others are protected by national governments; the Ripon Falls were drowned by a dam in 1952 and Guaíra Falls in 1982.

In which country's Vrtoglavica Cave is the highest known subterranean waterfall?

The World Waterfall Database listed 7,827 falls in 2013, but over 90% of its entries are in North America.

In Chinese tradition, a waterfall represents which season?

It also stands for yin and for the Chinese dragon's power over water.