Mount Everest

Mount Everest, also called Chomolungma or Qomolangma (or Sagarmatha (Nepali: सगरमाथा) is the highest mountain on Earth, as measured by the height of its summit above sea level. The mountain, which is part of the Himalaya range in High Asia, is located on the border between Nepal and Tibet, China. By the end of the 2006 climbing season there had been 3,050 ascents to the summit by 2,062 individuals, and at least 630 more ascents in 2007.

Naming

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The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Chomolungma or Qomolangma (translated as "Mother of the Universe" or "Goddess Mother of the Earth"), and the related Chinese name is (simplified Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰; traditional Chinese: 珠穆朗瑪峰) or Shèngmǔ Fēng (simplified Chinese: 圣母峰; traditional Chinese: 聖母峰).[citation needed] According to English accounts of the mid-19th century, the local name in Darjeeling for Mount Everest was Deodungha, or "Holy Mountain." [1]. In the 1960s, the Government of Nepal gave the mountain the official Nepali name of Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा), meaning "Goddess of the Sky".[citation needed]
In 1865, the mountain was given its English name by Andrew Waugh, the British surveyor-general of India. With both Nepal and Tibet closed to foreign travel, he wrote:
I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor, Colonel Sir George Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or native appellation. But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation, if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to penetrate into Nepal. In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty devolves on me to assign…a name whereby it may be known among citizens and geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.

Measurement

Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852, using trigonometric calculations based on measurements of "Peak XV" (as it was then known) made with theodolites from 240 km (150 miles) away as part of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India. Measurement could not be made from closer due to a lack of access to Nepal. Peak XV was found to be exactly 29,000 feet (8,839 m) high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 feet (8,840 m). The arbitrary addition of 2 feet (0.6 m) was to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.