World Waterfalls Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

At 78 m tall and 101 m wide, this is the largest waterfall in its country and one of the biggest in Asia. It stands among limestone hills full of caves. One cave runs behind the falling water, so visitors can look out through the curtain. It appeared in a much-loved TV version of an old novel about a journey to the west. Which waterfall is this?

Question 2

This waterfall drops about 250 m in stages through a wooded gorge. It is famous less for nature than as the spot where a 19th-century writer tried to kill off his famous detective. Readers were so angry that he had to bring the character back. A steep cable railway built for book-loving tourists still runs. Which waterfall is this?

Question 3

This waterfall drops about 948 m in five free-falling leaps off a huge curved wall of dark rock, and is often called the second-tallest on Earth. The mountain range it falls from is named after a dragon and holds its country's highest point. One path to the top climbs a pair of exposed chain ladders bolted to the cliff. Which waterfall fits this description?

Question 4

This 30 m waterfall drops into a bright blue-green pool, coloured by chalky minerals in the water. It hides in a side branch of a world-famous canyon, reached only by a long hike, a mule ride or a helicopter. The land belongs to a Native American tribe, and the nearby village shares its name. A flash flood reshaped it in 2008. Which waterfall is this?

Question 5

This 44 m waterfall thunders into a canyon of volcanic rock and is often called the most powerful fall in its part of the world. You can feel its roar and spray from far away. It opened an early-2010s science-fiction film, and its river runs grey with fine rock dust carried down from a glacier. Which waterfall fits this description?

Question 6

This waterfall drops in two steps into a rocky canyon. Its name means 'golden falls,' from the brown-gold colour of its glacier-fed water. In the early 1900s a farmer's daughter fought off a plan to dam it, reportedly threatening to jump in. It is a key stop on a popular day trip from the capital. Name this waterfall.

Question 7

This waterfall drops 268 m in one unbroken plunge and is the tallest year-round single-drop fall on its continent, falling from a rainforest plateau in a world heritage park. A winding, partly unpaved road leads to it. Its forest is home to tree-living pouched animals found nowhere else. Can you name this waterfall?

📚 All Quizzes

Browse every category and see the full list of quizzes on BriskQuiz

→

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.