Amazing Facts About The Earth You Should Know

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor and support life. About 29.2% of Earth's surface is land consisting of continents and islands. The remaining 70.8% is covered with water, mostly by oceans, seas, gulfs, and other salt-water bodies, but also by lakes, rivers, and another freshwater, which together constitute the hydrosphere.

Some of the interesting and random facts about Earth:

The radius of the Earth is 6,371 km.

The age of Earth is 4.543 billion years. The age of 4.54 billion years found for the Solar System and Earth is consistent with current calculations of 11 to 13 billion years for the age of the Milky Way Galaxy (based on the stage of evolution of globular cluster stars) and the age of 10 to 15 billion years for the age of the Universe (based on the recession of distant galaxies). Source

The oldest rocks on Earth found so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake (4.03 Ga) and the Isua Supracrustal rocks in West Greenland (3.7 to 3.8 Ga). Source

A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere.

The sphericity of the Earth was established by Greek astronomy in the 3rd century BC. Earth is not a perfect sphere though.

The earliest known globe sample is the one constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC.

The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century AD Roman marble sculpture of Atlas holding up a celestial globe. The oldest surviving celestial globe sits atop the Farnese Atlas, carved in the 2nd century Roman Empire.

The world's largest earthquake was encountered in Bio-Bio, Chile. It is also known as Valdivia Earthquake. The earthquake that struck near Valdivia, Chile, in 1960 was the most powerful temblor in recorded history. You can't even imagine that this earthquake left about 2 million people homeless.