Nine sheer drops, counted down by height — and the last one falls so far that most of the river never reaches the bottom as water.
762 metres off the edge of Nyanga National Park into the Honde Valley. It is the tallest waterfall in Zimbabwe and the second tallest in all of Africa.
771 metres in two great tiers. Villagers had lived beside it for generations, but it only appeared on world maps after a survey expedition in 2005.
773 metres down a wall of the Romsdalen valley. The Rauma railway runs along its base, which makes it one of the tallest falls you can see from a train seat.
836 metres from an alpine lake straight into Doubtful Sound. Fiordland catches several metres of rain a year, so it swells from a trickle to a torrent in hours.
840 metres, the tallest in North America. It is fed by a snowfield on the cliff above Princess Louisa Inlet, and you can realistically only reach it by boat.
845 metres, making it the tallest waterfall in Europe. Meltwater from the Vinnufonna glacier feeds it, so it runs hardest on the warmest summer days.
896 metres in four linked drops through cloud forest near Cuispes. It was properly measured only in 2007 — and instantly became one of the world's tallest.
947 metres in five leaps off the Drakensberg Amphitheatre. A 2016 survey argued it is taller than Angel Falls — the ranking is still genuinely disputed.
979 metres, with a single unbroken plunge of 807 metres off Auyán-tepui. That is roughly nineteen times the height of Niagara, in one fall.
Angel Falls drops so far that wind breaks the column into mist before it reaches the base. In the dry months it can vanish entirely on the way down.