Where Is Mount Everest?
The Mount Everest is the highest mountain peak in the world. It is located on the border between Nepal and Tibet. It is also known as Mount Chomolungma and it is the highest mountain on the Earth. Its summit is 8,848 m above the sea-level.
In 1808, the British decided to find the height of mountains in the Indian subcontinent. Nepal was hesitant to allow the British explorers to come into their nation fearing British military aggression. But, The British managed to obtain the permission and James Nicolson was assigned the job in 1847. He calculated the height to be 9,200 meters. Although he didn’t come up with an accurate estimate; it was sufficient to make Mt. Everest the highest point on the surface of the planet. It was known as Peak XV in those days. Andrew Waugh, another officer in the British army, began working on the data compiled by James and he came across some errors in the technique used to measure the height – some factors were not taken into account. He set himself the task of measuring the correct height and came up with the figure of 8839.8 m. The current refined measurements show the height to be 8848 m.
The name Peak XV was used among the British officers and it was not more than a jargon. Then, the British decided to name the mountain. It was a long and arduous task because they couldn’t have ignored the local sentiments. They finally agreed on ‘Mt. Everest’. The Nepalese government, however, passed a resolution in 1960s and made ‘Sagarmatha’ the official name.
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, a New Zealand mountaineer, and Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the peak of the mountain and they achieved the feat in 1953. Since then, a number of mountaineers around the world have tried to repeat the journey. Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler from Italy and Austria were the first mountaineers to climb the mountain in 1980 without supplement oxygen. Various other climbing records have been set on the mountain but deaths are not uncommon.
Category: Geography