Everest, Mount

Related Category: South Asia Physical Geography

peak, 29,035 ft (8,850 m) high, on the border of Tibet and Nepal, in the central Himalayas. It is the highest elevation in the world. Called Chomo-Lungma [Mother Goddess of the Land] by Tibetans, it is named in English for the surveyor Sir George Everest. It was first climbed on May 28, 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal reached the summit. The body of George H. L. Mallory, who died in an earlier attempt (1924), was found on the mountain in 1999.

See S. B. Ortner, Life and Death on Mt. Everest (1999).