Mountain

DEFINITION 

There is no generally accepted definition for how tall a hill has to be to be called a mountain. Some regions say 1,000ft, others say 2,000ft.

Scottish mountains over 3,000ft high are called Munros. British mountains and hills over 150 meters high are called Marilyns.

RECORDS

The highest mountain on Earth is usually said to be Mount Everest in the Himalayas, whose summit is 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above mean sea level.

Mount Everest from KalarPatar.jpg Wikipedia Commons

Though Mount Everest lays claim to the highest altitude, due to the bulge of the Earth at the equator, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is about 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) higher.

Mauna Kea in Hawaii is some 4,000ft taller than Everest if measured from its undersea base.

A view of the Mauna Kea volcano of Hawaii from the ocean.

At 5,642 meters or 18,510 feet Mount Elbrus is the highest peak in Europe. It's located just in Russia, though it is only a few miles from the border of Georgia.

Denali (also known as Mount McKinley, its former official name) is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190 m) above sea level. Located in the Alaska Range in the interior of Alaska, Denali is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve.

By Denali National Park and Preserve - _MG_4070Uploaded by AlbertHerring, Wikipedia Commons

The highest mountain in Turkey is Mount Ararat, which is where Noah's Ark landed. It was first climbed in October 1829, by a professor called Frederick Parrot.

The world's highest unclimbed mountain is the 24,981ft Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan, which is the world's 40th highest mountain. The reason no one has ever climbed it is because it's located in a country that bans climbing mountains.

At 40 thousand kilometers (25,000 miles, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the longest mountain chain on Earth.

Mount Thor, officially called the Thor Peak, in Auyuittuq National Park, on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, is a granite peak that features the world's tallest purely vertical drop. The drop measures 1250 meters and angles inwards at 105 degrees making it more of an overhang. Mount Thor was first climbed in 1965 by Lyman Spitzer and Donald Morton during an Alpine Club of Canada expedition led by Pat Baird.

View of Mount Thor summit in 1997

The world's smallest mountain, in the state of Victoria in Australia, is Mount Wycheproof, which rises from a featureless plain to a height of 141ft.

The tallest mountain in the solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m (69,459 ft) - nearly three times taller than Mount Everest. Olympus Mons is so large at its base that an observer on its peak wouldn’t know he was standing on a mountain because its slope would be obscured by the curvature of the planet itself.

FUN FACTS

Around one fifth of the Earth’s land is covered by mountain. They are home to 15% of the world´s population.

Mountains are home to 15% of the world´s population and host about half of the world's biodiversity hotspots. 

More than half of humanity relies on mountain freshwater for everyday life.

International Mountain Day was established by the UN General Assembly in 2003 to encourage sustainable development in mountains. It is held each year on December 11.   

Kangchenjunga, the tallest mountain until a survey of Everest in 1849, has never been fully climbed. Kangchenjunga was first climbed in May 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band, who were part of a British expedition. They stopped short of the summit in accordance with the promise given to the Chogyal that the top of the sacred mountain would remain intact. Every climber since has done this, too.

The Mountains of Kong, are West African mountain range that was charted on maps between 1798 and the late 1880s. It was later discovered that the mountains never existed and were made up by the original cartographer, James Rennell.

In 1964 Canada honored John F. Kennedy by naming the tallest unclimbed mountain in North America "Mt. Kennedy." The following year Robert F. Kennedy, as part of a National Geographic expedition, became the first person ever to reach the summit.

In 1962 two US scientists discovered Peru's highest mountain, Nevado Huascarán, was in danger of collapsing. When this was made public, the government threatened the scientists and banned civilians from speaking of it. On May 31, 1970, during a major earthquake, it collapsed on the town of Yangoy killing 20,000.

Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 49,000 feet (15,000 metres).

There is a mountain in Australia named Mt. Disappointment, named as the explorers found the view from it poor and wanted to reflect that.

The K2, the world's second tallest mountain, has no local name. It is so remote and inaccessible that very few local people knew of its existence, and thus why it retains its original surveying moniker given to it by British surveyors.

If all of the oceans in the world evaporated, Hawaii would be the tallest mountain in the world.

Sources UN, Daily Express