World Waterfalls Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

This waterfall drops 226 m in one unbroken plunge and is often called the tallest single-drop fall by amount of water. It lies deep in barely-touched rainforest in a country with very few people, reached only by small plane or a walk of several days. A tiny golden frog lives only in the pools of plants at its edge. Can you name this waterfall?

Question 2

This waterfall drops 60 m from a cliff that was once the edge of the sea. A path runs right behind the falling water. It sits just off a coastal ring road, which makes it one of its country's most photographed falls, though the path turns to ice in winter. A smaller fall hides in a slot canyon a short walk away. Which waterfall is being described here?

Question 3

This powerful waterfall drops 60 m over an old sea cliff and is about 25 m wide, wide enough to throw up one or two rainbows on almost any sunny day. Legend says a Viking hid a treasure chest in a cave behind it. A staircase climbs to a viewpoint at the top, where a long inland hiking trail starts. Can you name this waterfall?

Question 4

This 21 m waterfall pours over a band of hard, dark volcanic rock into a deep pool, and is one of the biggest falls by flow in its country. That rock band gives its name to a wider rock formation in the area. The valley was once a lead-mining centre, and a long walking trail along the river passes right by. Which waterfall is this?

Question 5

This waterfall fans out about 37 m down a staircase of dark rock columns. Its water runs clear because the glacier-fed stream sinks underground and is filtered before it reappears. An 11 to 12 km forest loop on the side of a volcano leads to it, and it was named after a character in an old novel. Which waterfall fits this description?

Question 6

Hidden almost entirely inside a mountain, this is ten linked falls carrying melt-water from three glaciers through tunnels in the rock, barely visible from outside. A lift cut into the rock takes visitors to walkways beside the roaring water. It lies in a valley of tall cliffs said to have inspired a famous fantasy world. Name this waterfall.

Question 7

Only 23 m tall but 150 m wide, this is the largest waterfall in its region by flow. It formed at the end of the last ice age, when ice-carried rubble pushed the river onto a new path. Boat tours run out to two rock towers that stand in the middle of the falls, and a castle looks down from the cliff. Can you name this waterfall?

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About World Waterfalls

The way a waterfall gets ranked as "the tallest" or "the biggest" depends entirely on which measurement you pick, and the world's most famous falls rarely top every list at once. Angel Falls in Venezuela holds the record for the tallest uninterrupted single drop at 979 meters, but by sheer water volume, nothing rivals Africa's Victoria Falls or the Boyoma and Livingstone Falls along the Congo River, whose combined cataracts move an almost unimaginable amount of water without ever producing one dramatic sheer plunge. Niagara Falls, despite its fame, isn't even close to the tallest waterfall on Earth, at only around 51 meters, its reputation resting instead on raw power and its uniquely accessible location straddling a major international border.

Geology explains a lot of what makes each waterfall distinctive. Iceland's collection of falls, including Gullfoss, Dettifoss, and Skogafoss, are fed by glacial meltwater carrying fine volcanic sediment, which is why so many of them run a distinctive grey or golden-brown color rather than clear blue. Travertine waterfalls like Croatia's Plitvice Lakes and Laos's Kuang Si Falls owe their vivid turquoise pools to dissolved limestone actively building new mineral terraces even today. A handful of falls aren't natural at all: Italy's Cascata delle Marmore was engineered by Roman engineers over two thousand years ago simply to drain a flooding marshland, making it one of the oldest recorded pieces of large-scale water-management infrastructure still standing.

Many waterfalls carry stories that have nothing to do with their physical statistics. Switzerland's Reichenbach Falls became world-famous not for its height but as the fictional site where Sherlock Holmes supposedly met his end, a plot twist so unpopular with readers that Arthur Conan Doyle was eventually forced to bring the detective back to life. South Africa's Howick Falls marks the spot where a young Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, an event now commemorated with a memorial sculpture near the site. Local legend attaches itself to waterfalls across every continent, from a supposed treasure chest hidden behind Iceland's Skogafoss to Peru's Gocta Cataracts, which stayed essentially unknown to the outside world until 2005 despite generations of nearby farmers knowing exactly where it was the entire time.

A number of famous falls are also seasonal in ways that can genuinely surprise a first-time visitor. Rivers fed primarily by monsoon rain or snowmelt, including several of India's most celebrated falls, can shrink to a fraction of their peak flow for months at a time, while hydroelectric dams upstream of falls like Niagara and Ethiopia's Blue Nile Falls now regulate water release on a schedule, meaning the thunderous cascade in a postcard photo isn't always what's flowing on any given day.