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Discover the Heights of Fun: Top 7 Amusing Facts About Hills You Never Knew!

illustration of hills
Get ready to elevate your knowledge as we embark on a journey to uncover some fascinating and amusing facts about the world's rolling hills!

1. Dancing Lava Landscapes

What do you get when lava puts on its dancing shoes and grooves its way across the Earth's surface? A flow-mance for the ages: The different types of lava flows like pahoehoe, aa, and block lava are determined by the magma's viscosity, with lower viscosity producing smoother pahoehoe flows and higher viscosity resulting in rougher aa and block lava flows.
Source => accessscience.com

2. Ice-Walled-Lake Plains: Prehistoric Ice Rinks

Did someone order a dish-shaped landform to go? Look no further than ice-walled-lake plains, the natural ice (skate) rinks from prehistory: These nifty, flat-topped features develop in stagnant ice and stick around even after the ice melts, making them the belles of the hill ball amidst their surrounding hummocky terrain neighbors. And to top it off, they've got trendy rim edges that'll make any geologist swoon.
Source => climate-policy-watcher.org

3. Belly Laughs and Barrows: Hilltop Monuments

Belly laughs meet burial grounds in the British Isles: The oldest monuments still standing in Britain, the chambered long barrows, are found majestically plopped atop picturesque hills and slopes, likely as grandiose markers for herding paths. These ancient, oddly fabulous tombstones are most densely concentrated in the Cotswold hills and Marlborough Downs, tallying up to more than 150 hauntingly hilltop oases.
Source => countrylife.co.uk

4. Vantage Point: Hills as Civilization's Strategy

From ancient architects with a penchant for elevated real estate to modern lawmakers who can't resist a good uphill battle: Hills have long been strategic vantage points for civilizations, starting with Ancient Rome, which was built on seven of them to ward off pesky invaders, and continuing today with the United States Congress, who gather at Capitol Hill to conduct their legislative wrangling.
Source => education.nationalgeographic.org

High-Speed Pursuit of Bobsledding Thrills

5. High-Speed Pursuit of Bobsledding Thrills

When bobsledders aren't busy yelling "Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time!", they engage in a high-speed pursuit of victory and thrills: Hurtling through icy tracks at speeds of up to 93 mph, bobsledding is considered one of the fastest and most dangerous winter sports, with world records reaching a breakneck 125 mph.
Source => xtremego.com

6. Mount Sharp: Mars' Breathtakingly Tall Hill

Feeling peaky on another planet? No problem! Head over to Mars and conquer the towering Mount Sharp, where the altitude will leave you literally breathless: This colossal hill looms so high that it would outstretch all Earthly mountains if only we could transplant it to our dearly beloved Blue Orb, providing NASA's Curiosity rover with an exhilarating climb and teaching us about Mars' past environments since 2012.
Source => spacespecialists.com

7. Iron Age Hillforts: Ancient Penthouse Living

Who needs the Iron Throne when you've got an Iron Age penthouse?: Hillforts, predominantly built by the Celts in central and western Europe, housed up to 1,000 people as tribal centers, production spaces, and defensive strongholds during the Bronze and Iron Ages. These elevated settlements were the ancient equivalent of high-rise condos, with some evolving into oppida in the Late Iron Age, boasting a whopping 10,000 inhabitants!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

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