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I had an officemate who had a trivia question that no one could answer: Q: What country has the highest lowest point? Naturally, you'd think Nepal or Tibet, b

I had an officemate who had a trivia question that no one could answer: Q: What country has the highest lowest point? Naturally, you'd think Nepal or Tibet, but it's Lesotho.

OisinMoran 4y ago
This is a great trivia question indeed! Lesotho shows up in my favourite one to ask too of "How many countries are contained entirely within another? And what are they?" From your officemate's one I naturally had to look up the other entries in the quadrant (which could flesh out a nice geography round): Highest high: Nepal/China (8848m) Highest low: Lesotho (1400m) Lowest high: Tuvalu (5m) Lowest low: Israel (-428m) And just learned that the summit of Everest is on the Nepal/China border!
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  One more: What is the point on Earth the furthest from the Earth's center? If you hear that, you think "Well, I guess it can't be the top of Everest." And indeed, it's not. Earth is not spherical.
  - biorach 4y ago
    it's a mountain in Peru, right?
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      You're going to make me look this up, right? :) I seem to remember it was Ecuador, but you might be right. The Earth bulges near the equator.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Yes. Ecuador. Chimborazo. A little south of the equator but close. Cotopaxi is closer to the equator but lower. (Huascarán in Peru comes close though.)
rob74 4y ago
Q: what country has the lowest "non-zero" and positive low point? Moldova, which is actually landlocked, but has a port reachable by smaller seagoing vessels - which I originally learnt when reading about the ship that carried the fertilizer that eventually caused the catastrophic Beirut explosion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Rhosus) - it was registered in Moldova... This list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevation_extremes_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevation_extremes_by_... is really interesting if you're into such geographical trivia. For instance, I was surprised by how many countries have low points substantially below sea level. So far I was only aware of the Dead Sea and Death Valley...

I had an officemate who had a trivia question that no one could answer: Q: What country has the highest lowest point? Naturally, you'd think Nepal or Tibet, but it's Lesotho.

OisinMoran 4y ago

This is a great trivia question indeed! Lesotho shows up in my favourite one to ask too of "How many countries are contained entirely within another? And what are they?" From your officemate's one I naturally had to look up the other entries in the quadrant (which could flesh out a nice geography round): Highest high: Nepal/China (8848m) Highest low: Lesotho (1400m) Lowest high: Tuvalu (5m) Lowest low: Israel (-428m) And just learned that the summit of Everest is on the Nepal/China border!

AlbertCory 4y ago
One more: What is the point on Earth the furthest from the Earth's center? If you hear that, you think "Well, I guess it can't be the top of Everest." And indeed, it's not. Earth is not spherical.
- biorach 4y ago
  it's a mountain in Peru, right?
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    You're going to make me look this up, right? :) I seem to remember it was Ecuador, but you might be right. The Earth bulges near the equator.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Yes. Ecuador. Chimborazo. A little south of the equator but close. Cotopaxi is closer to the equator but lower. (Huascarán in Peru comes close though.)

rob74 4y ago

Q: what country has the lowest "non-zero" and positive low point? Moldova, which is actually landlocked, but has a port reachable by smaller seagoing vessels - which I originally learnt when reading about the ship that carried the fertilizer that eventually caused the catastrophic Beirut explosion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Rhosus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Rhosus) - it was registered in Moldova... This list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevation_extremes_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevation_extremes_by_... is really interesting if you're into such geographical trivia. For instance, I was surprised by how many countries have low points substantially below sea level. So far I was only aware of the Dead Sea and Death Valley...