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It s a record naturally
01:00 Mon 29th Jan 2001 | People & Places
By Steve Cunningham< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
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EVERYONE knows what's the world's longest river, don't they Of course you do - it's the Nile. But do you know the natural world's other record-breakers Read on ...
First, a few facts about the Nile. This great river (Arabic name: Bahr An-Nil) rises south of the equator and flows northward through north-eastern Africa to drain into the Mediterranean. It is about 4,132 miles (6,650km) long and its basin includes parts of Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, most of The Sudan, and the cultivated part of Egypt.
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The Nile is formed by three main streams: the Blue Nile, the Atbara and the White Nile.
You'll know this one, too.
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What's the world's tallest mountain
Mount Everest, on the border between Nepal and China (Tibet) is the highest point on Earth.
Three ridges - the South-east, North-east, and West - culminate in two summits at 29,035ft (8,850m; Everest) and 28,700ft (8,748m; South Peak).
The summit reaches two-thirds of the way through the air of the Earth's atmosphere.
The mountain, then known as Peak XV, was discovered to be the world's highest by the survey department of the Government of India in 1856 from� theodolite readings. It was named after Colonel George Everest (1790-1866), former surveyor-general of India.
What's the world's biggest island
Greenland�... and it's not a place for the faint-hearted.
Greenland's surrounding seas are either permanently frozen or chilled. The inland area is covered with ice, which can be up to 2 miles (5km) thick. The ice-free coastal region, where all the population lives, covers 131,900 sq miles (341,700 sq km).
Most of the country is covered in continuous twilight in the winter except for the north, where there's complete darkness.
The Disko Bay region and South Greenland are the most visited places and offer the widest selection of tours. Nuuk, the capital, has a population of 12,233.
What's the world's highest waterfall
The Salto Angel falls in the Guiana Highlands, south-eastern Venezuela, on the Chur�n River. It drops 3,212ft (979m) and is 500ft (150m) wide at the base. It leaps from a flat-topped plateau, Auy�n-Tepu� (Devil's Mountain) and was discovered in 1935. Curiously, the falls are named after James Angel, an American adventurer who crash-landed his plane nearby in 1937.
What's the world's tallest tree
It's a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) called Tall Tree. It can be found in the southern section of the Redwood National Park in the north-western corner of California.
In 1963 it was measured at 367.8ft (112.1m) tall (although its top broke off later) and had a diameter of 14ft (4m).� Redwoods can live as long as 2,000 years, protected from fire by their thick, sapless bark.
Finally, for this little outing on the world's record-breaking wonders, what's the deepest point in an ocean It's the Mariana Trench, in the floor of the western North Pacific Ocean, east of the Mariana Islands.
It stretches for more than 1,580 miles (2,550km) with a mean width of 43 miles (69km) and 36,201ft (11,034m) deep.
On 23 January, 1960, the French-built United States Navy-operated bathyscaph Trieste, with Jacques Piccard aboard, made a record dive to 35,800ft (10,911m) in the trench.
