A stubborn myth says water drains in opposite directions north and south of the equator. Not so: at the scale of a basin, the Coriolis effect is far too weak, and the shape of the sink or a slight swirl decides. Over thousands of kilometres, though, it wins: cyclones spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern.
On 27 August 1883, the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa was heard as far away as Rodrigues Island, nearly 4,800 km away. Its pressure wave was picked up by barometers worldwide and circled the globe several times. The tsunamis that followed killed more than 36,000 people.
The deepest known point in the ocean, Challenger Deep, lies roughly 10,900 m below the Pacific surface. Drop Everest in and its summit would still sit about 2 km underwater. Down there, the pressure is more than 1,000 times what you feel at sea level, roughly a tonne pressing on every square centimetre.