Everest, Mount

Peak on the crest of the Himalayas, southern Asia. The highest point on Earth, with a summit at 29,035 ft (8,850 m), it lies on the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Numerous attempts to climb Everest were made from 1921; the summit was finally reached by Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal in 1953. In dispute is whether the English explorer George Mallory, whose body was discovered below Everest's peak in 1999, had actually reached the peak earlier, in 1924, and was descending it when he died. The formerly accepted elevation of 29,028 ft (8,848 m), established in the early 1950s, was recalculated in the late 1990s.