Records and extremes

Angel Falls

Venezuela's Angel Falls is the world's tallest waterfall at 979 metres, with a longest single drop of 807 metres.

20 facts

At a glance

979 metres

Total height

807 metres

Longest single drop

1933

Year Jimmie Angel flew over the falls

3 million hectares

Area of Canaima National Park

65 per cent

Share of the park covered by tepui formations

Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's tallest waterfall, with a total height of 979 metres (3,212 feet).
Guinness World Records lists its longest single drop as 807 metres (2,648 feet), a record in its own right.
Guinness World Records notes a debate over whether the full 979 metres should count as one waterfall. If only the 807-metre plunge is counted, it says Tugela Falls in South Africa, at 948 metres, would be the tallest.
UNESCO rounds the figure to 1,000 metres and describes it as the highest waterfall in the world.

The water leaves the flat-topped Auyán tepui, a table mountain rising out of dense tropical forest, on a branch of the Carrao River in Bolívar state.
Auyán-tepui is also known as Devil's Mountain.
The falls lie in Canaima National Park, which spreads over 3 million hectares in south-eastern Venezuela along the border with Guyana and Brazil.
Roughly 65 per cent of the park is covered by tepui formations, which UNESCO calls a unique biogeological entity of great geological interest.
UNESCO inscribed Canaima National Park on the World Heritage List in 1994.
The park's sheer cliffs and waterfalls form what UNESCO describes as a spectacular landscape.

The falls are named after Jimmie Angel, an American pilot who flew over them in 1933.
Angel recorded the falls in his logbook after the flight, and that record is how the waterfall came to carry his name.
Angel, an American bush pilot who was born in Missouri, is the man the falls are named after.
He was born in Missouri, and the Guardian describes him as the first outsider to see the waterfall.
A National Geographic expedition surveyed the falls in 1949.

The falls' Pemon name is Kerepakupai Merú, which means "waterfall of the deepest place".
In December 2009, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez announced on television that the falls should be known by their indigenous name rather than that of a foreign pilot.
Chávez said that millions of indigenous eyes had seen and prayed to the falls before Angel arrived, and that nobody should call them Angel Falls any more.
Chávez first gave the name as Cheru-Merú, then corrected it when told that was also the name of a smaller, nearby waterfall.
Guinness World Records lists the record under the names Kerepakupai Merú, Salto Ángel and Angel Falls.