In 2025, the World Meteorological Organization certified a new record: an 829 km 'megaflash' spotted by satellite on 22 October 2017, from eastern Texas to near Kansas City. The duration record belongs to another flash, which lit up the skies over Uruguay and northern Argentina for more than 17 seconds in 2020. Only satellites can track these monsters from end to end.
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.