Mount Kinabalu (4,100 m) in Kinabalu National Park, Borneo, is the highest point in Malaysia.

Bukit Tabur, twenty kilometres from Kuala Lumpur, lies on the world's longest quartz ridge; it is officially closed as it has claimed many lives.

Malaysia's coastline is 4,675 km and has over two hundred islands.

Malaysia shares Borneo with Brunei and Kalimantan. The island, comprising of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, the country of Brunei, and Kalimantan, part of Indonesia, is one of the largest in the world.

The Great Cave in Borneo is the site of the discovery of Southeast Asia's oldest human remains, dating from forty thousand years ago.

Clearwater Cave, in Malaysia's Gunung Mulu National Park, at over one hundred kilometres, is the longest cave in Southeast Asia and contains many stalactites.

The archaeological heritage of the Lenggong Valley, a World Heritage site, spans almost two million years, one of the longest records of early man in one locality.

The Orang Asli, the aboriginal people of the Malaysian Peninsula, totalled over sixty thousand people at the end of the twentieth century.

Malaysia has the world's oldest rainforests. The forests of Sabah are the home of trees towering over one hundred metres high.

Rafflesia, named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, is the world's largest flower and is found in the Malaysian rainforest.

In 1826 the British settlements of Malacca, Penang and Singapore combined to form the Straits Settlements.

James Brooke, an Englishman, born in India, was given the region now known as Sarawak in return for helping to put down a rebellion in Borneo.

In 1948 British Malayan territories formed the Federation of Malaya.

Malaya became independent from the United Kingdom in 1957.

The Federation of Malaysia consisting of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak was formed in 1963. Singapore left the Federation in 1965.

Malaysia is a member of the Commonwealth.

On 26 December 2004, a quake occurred under the sea near Aceh in north Indonesia (8.9 on the Richter scale); this produced tsunamis causing flooding and destruction in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Thailand, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and the east coast of Africa (Kenya and Somalia).

In December 2006 and January 2007 many tens of thousands of people in Malaysia were made homeless by flooding in the south of the country.

In July 2014 a Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine, close to the Russian boarder; 298 people lost their lives.

In February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was killed with a nerve agent at a Malaysian airport.

On 21 December 2022 it was reported in the Bangkok Post that over 70,000 people were evacuated during floods in Malaysia.