1,708 metres wide and up to 108 metres high, making the largest single sheet of falling water on Earth
Angel Falls is far taller and the Khone Falls far wider, but neither combines the two
Geography · Physical geography
Victoria Falls
first seen by a European in 1855
Zambia and Zimbabwe — on the Zambezi River
A curtain of water 1,708 metres wide and up to 108 metres high where the Zambezi drops into a chasm on the Zambia–Zimbabwe border. It is neither the world's tallest waterfall nor the widest, but the combination gives it the largest single sheet of falling water anywhere. The local name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means "the smoke that thunders", and the spray can be seen from fifty kilometres away.
How to spot them
- ▸The largest single sheet of falling water on Earth, though not the tallest or the widest fall
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Mosi-oa-Tunya', 'the smoke that thunders', 'Zambezi', 'Devil's Pool', 'Batoka Gorge'
- ▸Named by David Livingstone in 1855 after his queen
- ▸On the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and shared between them as a World Heritage site
Key facts
Its local name means 'the smoke that thunders'
Mosi-oa-Tunya, in the Lozi and Tonga languages; the spray plume is visible up to 50 km away
David Livingstone became the first European to see it in November 1855 and renamed it for his queen (1855)
He approached by canoe to the island now named after him
The river that feeds it is the fourth longest in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean
The Zambezi, some 2,570 km long
At low water, swimmers can sit in a rock pool on the very lip of the drop
The Devil's Pool, on the Zambian side, reachable only when the flow falls
Below it the water escapes through a zig-zag series of gorges cut along basalt fissures
Each gorge is a former line of the falls; they have retreated some 100 km upstream over time
A steel arch bridge designed to be within reach of the spray was opened just below it in 1905 (1905)
Cecil Rhodes wanted the spray on the carriages, though he never saw the site himself
Quick-fire facts
- •It is 1,708 m wide and falls up to 108 m, carrying an average of about 1,000 m³ of water per second
- •It lies on the Zambezi, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe
- •It was inscribed by UNESCO in 1989 as Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls, a transboundary site
- •David Livingstone first saw it on 16 November 1855 and named it for Queen Victoria
- •The Victoria Falls Bridge, opened in 1905, was designed by Ralph Freeman and George Hobson
- •The flow varies enormously with the rains; by November parts of the crest can dry to bare rock
- •The falls have been cutting back along basalt fault lines, leaving the zig-zag Batoka Gorge behind them
- •Common misconception: it is neither the world's highest waterfall (Angel Falls) nor the widest (Khone Phapheng) — its claim is the largest single curtain of falling water
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Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Mosi-oa-Tunya / Victoria Falls
- David Livingstone — Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa Livingstone's own 1857 account of reaching the falls