On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, drilling began on the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which eventually reached a depth of 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), making it the deepest borehole ever drilled and the lowest artificial point on Earth.

The Kola Peninsula is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is bordered by the Barents Sea to the north and by the White Sea to the east and southeast. The city of Murmansk, the most populous settlement on the peninsula, has a population of roughly 270,000 residents.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 is the deepest human-made hole on Earth, which attained maximum true vertical depth of 12,262 metres in 1989. It is the result of a scientific drilling effort to penetrate as deeply as possible into the Earth's crust conducted by the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District of the Kola Peninsula, near the Russian border with Norway.

A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water, other liquids, or gases. It may also be part of a geotechnical investigation, environmental site assessment, mineral exploration, temperature measurement, as a pilot hole for installing piers or underground utilities, for geothermal installations, or for underground storage of unwanted substances, e.g. in carbon capture and storage.

This article lists extreme locations on Earth that hold geographical records or are otherwise known for their geophysical or meteorological superlatives. All of these locations are Earth-wide extremes; extremes of individual continents or countries are not listed.