39 Exquisitely Extreme Things on Our Planet Earth

Mawsynram in India is the wettest place on Earth. It receives an average yearly rainfall of 467 inches. Another village located near Mawsynram currently holds 2 Guinness records, one for most rain in a 12 month period at 1,041.75 inches and the most rain in one month at 366 inches.

27. The oldest known piece of music is a drinking song called the Epitaph of Seikilos. It was found written on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet. Its lyrics include the line “Life exists only for a short while, and time demands its toll.”

28. The biggest cave in the world is the Son Doong Cave in Vietnam. It’s over 5.5 miles long, has a jungle and river, and could fit a 40-story skyscraper within its walls.

29. The world's shiniest living thing is a fruit named pollia condensata that grows in the central African forests.

30. The longest prison sentence ever requested in the world was 384,912 years of jailtime, against a 22-years-old man who was simply accused of failing to deliver 42,768 letters as a postman.

The saltiest lake on the planet is Lake Don Juan in Antarctica. Although the temperature can be as low as -50°C, it never freezes because of its high salinity.

32. The Hercules Moth is the largest moth in the world which has a wingspan up to 36 cm (14 inches). It spends up to two years in its cocoon but only lives two to eight days as it has no mouth and ultimately dies of starvation.

33. The underbelly membrane of lobsters is the toughest material of all-natural hydrogels, including collagen, animal skins, and natural rubber. The membrane is about as strong as industrial rubber composites, such as those used to make car tires, garden hoses, and conveyor belts.

34. Jon Brower Minnoch was the heaviest person ever recorded, weighing 1,400lb at his heaviest (635kg) in 1978. He later lost 924 lbs, the largest human weight loss ever documented, before then re-gaining 322 lbs and dying at the age of 41 in 1983.

35. The sharpest object known to man is a tungsten needle that tapers down to the thickness of one atom.

The rarest element on Earth is the halogen Astatine. It's so rare that only 30 grams of it can be found at any point in time on Earth, and only 0.05 micrograms of it have been produced to date. Most of its properties are unknown and no one has ever seen it in its natural form.

37. The shortest commercial flight can take as little as 47 seconds and costs £21. It's between two islands named Westray and Papa Westray islands in the UK.

38. Mawlynnong, a village of about 500 people in the state of Meghalaya, India is one of the cleanest places in all of Asia, with a total ban on polythene bags and smoking. It also has a functioning Matrilineal Society.

39. The world’s largest farm is the Mudanjiang City Dairy Farm located in China. It covers an area of 22.5 million acres. This is the same size as Portugal.