The highest mountain in the world in the Himalayas: it is Mount Everest. For hundreds of years nobody succeeded in reaching the summit. The people of Tibet called are Chomolungma, meaning ‘father of mountains’, and believed that strange wild creatures wandered about the mountain’s perpetual snows.
Many people thought it would be impossible to measure or climb Mount Everest. The British, who ruled India until after the Second World War, established an office in the 1800s to survey the mountain and measure it. The man who had the idea to start the office was George Everest and he also wanted to measure all the other mountains in the Himalayas. After much work the task was completed in 1852. The height was finally calculated as 8,840 metres (later established more precisely as 8,848 metres). The mountain was named after Everest in 1863. Another century passed before the peak of Everest was finally reached. In 1953 Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Sherpa Tenzing, a skilled mountaineer of India, climbed to the summit. Hillary and Tenzing had to wear oxygen masks to help them breathe in the thin air. The two climbers planted the flags of Britain, Nepal, India and the United Nations on the peak on which man had never before set foot.
Picture Credit : Google
