Florida’s largest lake, Lake Okeechobee covers an impressive 730 square miles near the Everglades. It’s the country’s third-largest freshwater lake. In second place is Iliamna Lake, situated west of the Gulf of Alaska with an area of 1,150 square miles. Iliamna is second in size only to Lake Michigan when it comes to freshwater lakes in the U.S.

Alpine lakes sit at high altitudes, usually 5,000 feet above sea level or higher. Lake Tahoe, which is located in both Nevada and California, is the largest alpine lake in North America. Known for its dazzling clear blue waters, Tahoe stretches for 22 miles from north to south and is about 12 miles wide — its entire shoreline is 75 miles long.

Located in central New York are the 11 Finger Lakes, so named because the long, narrow bodies of water resemble fingers when viewed from above. From west to east, the Finger Lakes are: Conesus, Hemlock, Canadice, Honeoye, Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles, and Otisco. The deepest and largest in area is Seneca Lake, which covers 67 square miles.

Lake Como may be well-known for its celebrity residents like George Clooney, but it is less than half the size of Italy's largest lake. Lake Garda covers a surface area of 143 square miles and stretches over 32 miles long. The glacially-formed lake extends through the northern provinces of Brescia, Trentino, and Verona near the Alps.

Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi, and Lake Tanganyika are collectively considered the Great Lakes of Africa. Together, they contain 27% of the world's freshwater. They are the world's third, sixth, and ninth-largest lakes by area, respectively. The giant bodies of water are found in East Africa's Great Rift Valleys region.

At more than 830,000 square miles, the Bay of Bengal in the northeastern Indian Ocean is larger than even the Gulf of Mexico. The Bay of Bengal measures roughly 1,000 miles wide, and it borders the countries of Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and Burma. Hudson Bay, located in northeastern Canada, covers about 470,000 square miles.

The Volga River is Europe's longest river, coursing a remarkable 2,294 miles through central Russia in a southerly trajectory until it meets the Caspian Sea. The Rhine River flows from about 820 miles from the Swiss Alps through Germany, France, Austria, and Belgium, before it empties into the North Sea at a delta in the Netherlands.

With more than 250,000 rivers, the United States boasts plenty of waterways, but not all are created equal. The country’s five longest rivers are the Missouri (2,341 miles), the Mississippi (2,202 miles), the Yukon (1,979 miles), the Rio Grande (1,759 miles), and the Colorado (1,450 miles).

Despite its name, the Caspian Sea is considered a lake. Located at the junction of Europe and Asia, it has a surface area of 143,244 square miles. At one point, the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan was the fourth-largest lake in the world, covering more than 26,000 square miles. Today, the sea occupies just 10% of its original surface area thanks to agricultural practices that have drained its waters.

Known as “Huang Hai” in Chinese and “Hwanghae” Korean, the Yellow Sea is a 435-mile-wide body of water that separates China from the Korean Peninsula, located north of the East China Sea. An arm of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea stretches from Suez, Egypt, to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, connecting it to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. It extends up to 220 miles wide.

Lake Ladoga, located in northwestern Russia, is the world’s 15th-largest freshwater lake by surface area and the 14th-largest by volume. It measures 136 miles in length, 51 miles in width, and has an average depth of 167 feet. Although smaller than Lake Lagoda, Lake Geneva is the largest lake in the Alps, straddling the border between France and Switzerland.

Located in the mountains of southern Siberia, just north of the Mongolian border, Lake Baikal is so large that it contains 20% of the world’s fresh water. Located on the border of present-day Peru and Bolivia, Lake Titicaca was a sacred space to the Incan peoples, who flourished in the Andean region of South America from around 1400 to 1533 CE.

Flowing for 2,341 miles, the Missouri River is America’s longest river. It originates near Three Forks, Montana, and then passes through seven states. The Rio Grande forms a natural border between much of the United States and Mexico. Flowing for 1,759 miles, the Rio Grande is the third-longest river in the U.S.

In 2021, National Geographic officially recognized the Southern Ocean — surrounding the continent of Antarctica — as its own body of water, bringing the number of oceans in the world to five. Their ranking in terms of square mileage are: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic. The Arctic Ocean covers about 6 million square miles, making up just over 4% of the world’s oceans.

Spanning over 3,000 miles of coastline and an area of over 600,000 square miles, the Gulf of Mexico is not only the largest gulf in the world, but also the seventh-largest body of water on Earth. The Persian Gulf, on the other hand, covers about 93,000 square miles.

The Nile River takes the crown for the world’s longest river, flowing 4,132 miles through 11 countries in northeastern Africa. However, the Yangtze River is the longest river to run entirely through one country, China. The 3,915-mile river is also the longest in Asia.

In 1931, construction of the Hoover Dam created Lake Mead, the largest human-made reservoir in the United States. Part of the Colorado River, Lake Mead covers an area of 247 square miles in Nevada and Arizona. It has a maximum capacity of approximately 28 million acre-feet of water. That's about 2 million acre-feet more than Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the U.S.

Covering more than 63 million square miles of Earth's surface, the Pacific Ocean is by far the largest body of water on the planet. It is also the deepest, and its ocean basin contains more than half of the free water on our planet. All of the world's continents could comfortably fit inside the Pacific basin, which is also the oldest ocean basin on Earth.

Of the five Great Lakes, Lake Ontario features bite-sized greatness at 7,340 square miles. It packs a big punch, though. Ontario is the lake chain’s outlet, linking to the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Erie may be the second-smallest of the Great Lakes, but it can claim at least one superlative: It’s the shallowest. Erie has an average depth of 62 feet.

The Mediterranean Sea is one of the world’s largest seas, covering about 970,000 square miles. It is further divided into 12 marginal seas, including the Ionian, Tyrrhenian, and Ligurian Seas. Located to the north, the Baltic Sea is considerably smaller. It covers about 149,000 square miles of European water area, bordering Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, and Germany.