Greatest Rivers

The volume of water flowing from the mouth of a river varies according to the season. The figures given are highest averages. The outflow of the Amazon would fill almost two million baths every second.

• Amazon flows into the South Atlantic, Brazil at 219,000 m3/sec .
• Ganges flows into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh at 43,900 m3/sec .
• Zaire(Congo) flows into the South Atlantic ,Angola/Congo  at 41,800 m3/sec .
• Chang Jiang flows into the Yellow Sea , China at 31,900 m3/sec .
• Orinoco flows into the South Atlantic , Venezuela at 31,900 m3/sec .
• Plate-Parana-Grande flows into the South Atlantic , Uruguay at 25,700 m3/sec .

Source - Whitaker's world of facts
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Greatest Rivers

Largest Deserts

Deserts cover about a third of the world's land area . They range from extremely arid and barren sandy deserts (about 4% of the total land surface of the globe) , through arid (15 per cent) to semi-arid (15 per cent).

Most deserts have features of all these , with one zone merging into the next.so the start and finish of the deserts are broken down by geographers into small desert regions - the Australian desert includes the the Gibson, Great Sandy , Great Victoria and Simpson.

Sahara , Northern Africa - 9,100,000 sq. km
Australian , Australia( includes Gibson , Great sandy ,Great Victoria and Simpson) - 3,400,000 sq. km
Arabian Peninsula, Southwest Asia ( includes an-Nafud and Rub al Khali ) - 2,600,000 sq. km
Turkestan, Central Asia (includes Kara-kum and Kyzylkum) - 1,900,000 sq. km
Gobi , Central Asia - 1,300,000 sq. km
North Anerican Desert , US/Mexico (includes Great Basin, Mojave ,Sonorah and Chihuahuan) - 1,300,000 sq. km

Largest Deserts

Longest river

The source of the Nile was discovered by Europeans in 1858 when British explorer John Hanning Speke reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, in what is now called Burundi.About one hundred years later, in 1953, the source of the Amazon was identified as a stream called Huarco flowing from the Misuie glacier in the Peruvian Andes mountains.

By following the Amazon from its source and up the Rio Para, it is possible to sail for 6,750 km , which is slightly more than the length of the Nile.But geographers do not consider the entire route to be part of the Amazon basin, so Nile is considered the world's longest river.

Nile flows from through Burundi , Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia , Kenya, Rwanda,Sudan,Tanzania, Uganda - 6,695 km.
Amazom flows through Peru and Brazil - 6,448 km.
Chang Jiang  flows through China - 6,378 km.
Huang He flows through China -5,464 km.
Amur flows through China and Russia - 4415 km .

In 2006 the British and New Zealand Ascend the Nile team sailed from the mouth to the source of the river. Using Global Positioning , they measured their journey and came up with a total length 107 km longer than the official figure.

Source : Whitaker's world of facts

Longest river

Manned space missions

During the 1950s, there was a "space rate" between the USA and USSR to be the first country to send a human into space. NASA's Mercury missions were originally unmanned, or carried only animals.The USSR launched the first man into orbit in 1961.

Each country's subsequent space missions had different aims . The USA focused on Moon landings with their Apollo programme and later the re-usable space shuttle . The Soviets and later Russia concentrated on  long duration missions , with the Mir space station.The latest manned mission is the International Space Station, which is four times larger than Mir.

Mission                              Country                                Years
Mercury                             USA                                     1959-63
Vostok                               USSR                                   1961-63
Voskhod                            USSR                                   1964-65
Gemini                               USA                                      1965-66
Apollo                               USA                                      1967-72
Soyuz                                USSR                                    1967-76
Salyut                                USSR                                    1971-82
Skylab                               USA                                      1973
Apollo Soyuz                     USA/USSR                           1975
Space shuttle                      USA                                     1981
Mir space station                USSR/Russia                         1986-2001
International space             USA,Canada,Japan,               1998-
station                               European Space Agency,
                                         Russia,Brazil
Shenzhou                          China                                       2003-2012

Manned space missions

Longest Glaciers

During the last Ice age, more than 30 percent of the Earth's surface was covered by glaciers- frozen rivers of ice that move very slowly . Today as much as 10 per cent is covered with glaciers.

The Lambert-Fisher Glacier is the longest in the world and was discovered in 1956.The longest glacier in North America is the Hubbard Glacier,Alaska,which measures 146 km .The longest in Europe is the Aletsch Glacier,Switzerland, at 35 km .

• Lambert-Fisher , Antarctica - 515 km
• Novaya Zemlya , Russia - 418 km
• Arctic Institute , Antarctica - 362 km
• Nimrod-Lennox-King , Antarctica - 290 km
• Denman , Antarctica - 241 km

Glaciers hold about 75 percent

of the world's fresh water . If all

the glaciers melted , the world's 

sea level would rise about 70m

Longest Glaciers

Artificial Satellites

The USSR's Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to enter Earth's orbit.This 83.6 kg metal sphere transmitted signals back to Earth for three weeks before its batteries failed.
In 1958 the USA began to launch its satellites.Five went into orbit.All of the earliest satellites have since crashed back to Earth,except Vanguard 1 (USA ,1958) which is still in space and likely to remain so for another 200 years.

Over the past 50 years,many more artificial satellites have been launched, with a greater range of uses.

Astronomy - The Hubble Space Telescope has been taking photographs of distant galaxies since 1990.

Communications -  Over 5000 satellites have been launched to transmit telephone,radio and television signals around the world . Fewer than half are still orbiting and many have stopped working.

Earth observatory satellites - These transmit images of the weather and the Earth's environment.They helped to show the depletion of ozone layer.

Global positioning system - This is the system of 24 linked satellites that allows people to pinpoint their exact position anywhere on earth. The system is operated by the US Department of Defense and is used by aircraft and ships GPS systems are now common in cars too.

Military satellites -  Governments use these 'spies in the sky' for surveillance but their precise functions are secrets.

Sources : Whitaker's world of facts

Artificial Satellites

Animal space pioneers

Before humans went into space animals were used to test equipment.The first animal to be sent up in a rocket- but not into space - was Albert 1 , a male rhesus monkey in 1948.He and his successor, Albert 2 , died during the tests.
However, on 20 september 1951, a monkey and 11 mice were recovered after a launch in a US Aerobee rocket. Many further animal experiments were carried out before the first manned space flight.

Space dogs and a cat - Laila, a female Samoyed husky , became the first animal in orbit after being launched by the USSR in Sputnik 2 November 1957. There was no way to bring her down and she died after ten days in space. Two female huskies, Belka and Strelka, orbited successfully in August 1960. Strelka later gave birth to puppies, one of which was given to US President John F. Kennedy. In October 1963, a French Veronique AGI rocket put a cat called Felix into space and returned him safely to Earth by parachute.

Monkey business - Able, a female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a female squirrel monkey , were launched by the USA in May 1959. They did not orbit and successfully returned to Earth .In November 1961 Enos, a male chimpanzee completed two orbits and survived . The USSR first space primates were monkeys Abrek and Bion , who orbited in December 1983 in one of a series of Bion satellite experiments.

Flying frogs - In 1970, the USA's Orbiting Frog Otolith satellite (OFO-A) launched two bulfrogs into orbit for a week. In december 1990,Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist , took six green tree frogs to the weightlessness experiments.

Animal space pioneers