Everest, Mount [key], peak, 29,032 ft (8,849 m) high (as officially recognized by China and Nepal; rock height only, 29,016 ft/8,844 m), on the border of Tibet and Nepal, in the central Himalayas. It is the highest elevation in the world. In 1999 American climbers using GPS measured the Everest's total height at 29,035 ft (8,850 m), but that measurement has not been accepted by Nepal or China. Called Chomolungma or Qomolangma [Mother Goddess of the Land] by Tibetans and Sagarmatha [head of the sea] by Nepalis, 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); W. Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (2011).
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