Encyclopedia of Trivia

A volcano is a vent on the Earth or another celestial body’s surface from which hot gases, ash and magma (molten rock) are ejected. Magma emerges as lava.

The word “volcano” comes from the name of the Roman God of Fire, Vulcan.

New Zealand volcano Pixiebay

A volcano has enough power to shoot ash as high as 50 kilometers (31 miles) into the atmosphere.

Volcanoes are needed to constantly replenish the atmosphere with nitrogen and carbon dioxide. They also create wonderfully fertile soil, which is why so many people choose to live next to sleeping volcanoes.

Supervolcanos usually have a large caldera and can produce devastation on an enormous, sometimes continental, scale.  Examples include Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park, USA, Lake Taupo in New Zealand and  Mount Tambor in Indonesia. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambor was the last eruption of a supervolcano.

Stratovolcanoes or composite volcanoes are tall conical mountains composed of lava flows and other ejecta in alternate layers, The Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala is a stratovolcano, mountainous with a towering peak. The gases in a stratovolcano build up to exert massive pressure and violent eruption.

October 1974 eruption of Volcán de Fuego

Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles generally do not explode.  catastrophically. Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is a "shield volcano" flat and wide like a huge shield lying on the ground. The lava from shield volcanoes move more slowly than from a stratovolcano.


Volcanoes were much more volatile and dangerous before humans populated this planet. They had to be violent in order to kick start our atmosphere and soil for plants and animals to thrive on.

Mount Vesuvius is a volcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. An eruption in AD 79 destroyed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum killing over 1,000 people.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius was described in such accurate and useful detail by Pliny The Younger, that vulcanologists now call eruptions of its kind "Plinian eruptions."

Vesuvius erupting. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection

The 1257 Samalas eruption was a major volcanic eruption of the Samalas volcano, next to Mount Rinjani on the island of Lombok, Indonesia. It may have triggered the Little Ice Age and famines in Europe. Geologists rank it as the most powerful eruption of the last 7,000 years. 

The largest  volcanic eruption in recent history in South America was recorded on February 19, 1600 when Peru’s Huaynaputina exploded. It belched 12 cubic kilometres of ash in the air for two weeks. This had a global impact, causing some of Europe’s coldest winters and a devastating famine in Russia.

Mount Tambora, a volcano located on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, began one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in recorded history on April 10, 1815, killing at least 71,000 people. The eruption continued for several days, with the most explosive phase occurring on April 15, 1815. The eruption sent huge plumes of ash, gas, and debris into the atmosphere, which caused global climate anomalies and led to a "year without a summer" in many parts of the world in 1816. 

Another of the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history happened on August 26, 1883 on Krakatoa, a small, volcanic island west of Sumatra in Indonesia. Heard 3,000 miles (4,828 kms) away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles (80 kns) into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people.

The sound made by the eruption of Krakatoa was so loud that if it was to happen in Ireland, it would sound like cannon fire in New York City.

An 1888 lithograph of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.

Martinique's Mount Pelée begun the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century on May 7, 1902. It completely destroyed St. Pierre, killing 30,000 people, wiping the city off the map.

Ludger Sylbaris, a man thrown into solitary confinement after a bar brawl, survived the Mount Pelée eruption because his cell was bombproof and poorly ventilated. He became one of only three known survivors of the event, and his prison cell still stands today.

1902 eruption

The largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century took place on June 6, 1912 on the Alaska Peninsula. The 60-hour-long Novarupta eruption expelled 3.1 to 3.6 cubic miles (13 to 15 km3) of ash, thirty times as much as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and created the Novarupta lava dome.

On May 18, 1980, a major volcanic eruption occurred at Mount St. Helens, a volcano located in Skamania County, in the U.S. state of Washington. It was the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history. The eruptions lasted nine hours, leaving a one-mile-wide crater where its peak had been. 57 people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. More than 6 million trees were uprooted or flattened by the blast.

The volcanologist David Johnson had fought to keep the summit Mt St Helens and Spirit Lake visitor-free for two months before the cataclysm. Instead of 1000 deaths there was 57; him among them. Johnson radioed "...Vancouver, this is it" seconds before he was incinerated.


Harry Glicken was devastated when his mentor David Johnson died during the eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980. Glicken met the same fate 11 years later during the eruption of Mt Unzen in Japan. Glicken and Johnson are the only American volcanologists to have died in volcanic eruptions.


Of the world's volcanic activity, 90 per cent takes place in its oceans. The South Pacific has the largest concentration of active volcanoes, with 1,133 volcanic cones identified in an area the size of New York State.

The chief volcanic regions on land are the central Andes (Chile): New Zealand's North Island: Hawaii: Japan and Antarctica.

Around five per cent of the world’s population live within the danger zones of active volcanoes.

The 25 tallest volcanoes in the world are all in South America.

Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost active volcano in the world.

Mount Erebus By Ehquionest - Own work

The only continent without an active volcano is Australia.

The last volcanic eruption in Britain was in the Scottish Highlands around 55 million years ago.

Ben Nevis is an extinct volcano.


Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system with hundreds of volcanoes and volcanic geysers. Active volcanoes constantly spew material onto Io's surface. Its volcanic eruptions are so powerful that they can be seen with large telescopes on Earth.

The highest volcanic eruption detected in our solar system was a 310-mile (500 km) plume emerging from Io, in 2001 by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

Picture below is active lava flows in the Io volcanic region Tvashtar Paterae (blank region represents saturated areas in the original data). Images taken by Galileo in November 1999 and February 2000.


The largest known volcano in the Solar System, at 88,000ft (26,822 metres) is Olympus Mons on Mars. At 16 miles high (26 kms) and 374 miles (602 kms) wide, is so heavy that it sits in a depression caused by the volcano's weight pressing down on the crust in the area.

Olympus Mons has such a gradual slope that someone standing at the base wouldn't be able to see the summit because it's beyond the horizon.


The Stromboli Volcano in Italy is the world's most active volcano and has been in a near-constant state of eruption for around 2,000 years.


In 1935 the U.S. 23rd Bomb Squadron dropped twenty 600-pound bombs in the path of a volcano's lava flow, thus saving the city of Hilo, Hawaii by diverting the lava away from the city.

On April 1, 1974 a local prankster Oliver "Porky" Bickar took 70 tires to the top of Mt. Edgecumbe, a volcano located at the southern end of Kruzof Island, Alaska. and lit them on fire. The locals thought the 400-year dormant volcano was erupting and a helicopter was sent up to check it out. When the helicopter arrived, the pilot found the words "APRIL FOOL" spray painted on the snow.

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had a volcano built at his 148 acre estate in Porto Rotondo, Sardinia, in 2006. With fireworks and a small earthquake, it was intended as a surprise at a party. Neighbors, unaware, rang the fire brigade.

Fine-grained volcanic ash can be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes.

Source Daily Express

Mount Vesuvius is a 1,281 metres (4,203 ft) volcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about 5.6 miles (9 km) east of Naples.


A massive volcanic explosion of Mount Vesuvius destroyed The Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy in AD 79.

Before Mount Vesuvius exploded in 79 AD, people who lived nearby did not even know that it was a volcano, because it had not erupted for 600 years.

Pompeii, with Vesuvius towering above By Qfl247,

The eruption buried Pompeii and Herculaneum beneath mud, lava and ash until they were rediscovered and excavated in the 18th century.

Over 1,000 people died in the eruption, but exact numbers are unknown.

The AD 79 eruption released 100,000 times the energy of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The eruption changed the way the Sarno River flowed, and raised the sea beach. Because of this, Pompeii ceased to be on the river nor next to the coast.

Vesuvius erupting. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection

Pliny the Younger described in two letters to to the historian Tacitus the mushroom cloud from the volcano as being in the shape of umbrella pine, a tree commonly found in the region. The eruption killed his uncle.

Such explosive eruptions, sending molten rock 15 to 20 miles high are known as Plinian.

Vesuvius has erupted more than 30 times since AD 79 but the richness of the soil after an eruption always led to new settlements around its base.

The eruption in 512 was so severe that people living on its slopes were granted tax exemption by Theodoric the Great, the Gothic king of Italy.

An eruption of Vesuvius on April 5, 1906 killed over 100 people and ejected the most lava ever recorded from a Vesuvian eruption. It ended plans for Italy to hold the Olympics in 1908, which were moved to London.

The most recent eruption was on March 18, 1944, which destroyed the villages of San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, Massa di Somma, and Ottaviano.


Vesuvius is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted in the last hundred years.

The entire mountain of Vesuvius was named an Italian National Park in 1995.

Daily Express

Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota was not named until 1885 when a New York attorney, Charles E Rushmore was surveying the mountain range on horseback with a guide. When asked the mountain's name the guide replied it never had a name, but from now on we'll call it Rushmore. The name stuck.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the area.

Mount Rushmore By Jonathunder

Robinson enlisted Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum to create the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution. Borglum had studied art in Paris when a youth with sculptor Auguste Rodin.

It was Borglum’s idea to honor the four presidents. He selected Mount Rushmore as the the rock of the mountain is composed of smooth, fine-grained granite. Also, because it faces the southeast, the workers had the advantage of sunlight for most of the day.

Gutzon Borglum and his team began work on the face of Mount Rushmore on October 4, 1927.

Most of the crew that worked on Mount Rushmore were miners who had come to the Black Hills in search of gold.

Over 90% of Mount Rushmore was carved using dynamite, removing over 450,000 tons of rock from the mountain. After all that blasting, the sculpture was finely carved to create a smooth surface.

Construction of the Mount Rushmore monument

Upon Gutzon Borglum's death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum took over as leader of the construction project.

The carving of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore was completed on October 31, 1941 after 14 years of construction by Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons. It’s estimated that the actual carving only took six years. The project was delayed a total of about eight years due to weather and lack of funding.

The total cost of the project was $989,992.32, and 85 percent of that cost was funded by Congress.

The sport of mountaineering originated on June 26, 1492 when an expedition set out to climb Mont Aiguille, in the Vercors near Grenoble, led by Antoine De Ville, Lord of Domjulien and Beaupré. De Ville and his team scaled the near-vertical Alpine peak Moguille on King Charles VIII orders, reaching the summit by means of ropes and siege ladders. Their achievement was not repeated until 1834. It was the first ever recorded climb of any technical difficulty.


The first recorded mention of altitude sickness was in 37 BC, when a Chinese official noted that a trade route to Afghanistan passed a mountain that caused sickness as travelers ascended it - in the report, this place was named “Big Headache Mountain”.

Picture of a mountaineer by Josef Feid Anastasius Grün

A climbing team led by two German brothers, Johann Rudolf and Hieronymus Meyer, became the first to reach the summit of the Jungfrau on August 3, 1811. The Jungfrau is the third highest summit in the Bernese Alps.

The beginning of mountaineering as a systematic sport is generally dated to the ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 by Sir Alfred Wills who made mountaineering fashionable, especially in Britain. This inaugurated what became known as the Golden age of alpinism, with the first mountaineering club - the Alpine Club - being founded three years later.

A seven-man team by led by the English illustrator, Edward Whymper made the first ascent of the Matterhorn on July 14, 1865. Four of the party members fell to their deaths and this ascent is generally regarded as marking the end of the golden age of alpinism.

The first ascent of the Matterhorn, by Gustave Doré

The Hakkōda Mountains incident happened on January 23, 1902, when a group of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers became lost in a blizzard on the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in northern Honshu, Japan, en route to Tashiro Hot Spring. The 199 deaths during a single ascent make it the most lethal disaster in the modern history of mountain climbing. From the 11 survivors, 8 needed amputations.

The first successful ascent of Mount McKinley, the highest point on the American continent, took place on June 7, 1913. The expedition was led by Hudson Stuck, an Episcopal priest, and accomplished climber, but he did not reach the summit himself. The climbers who successfully reached the summit were Harry Karstens, Robert Tatum, Walter Harper (a Native Alaskan), and Alfred Harper.

Yevgeniy Abalakov became in 1933 the first man to reach the highest point in the Soviet Union, Communism Peak (now called Ismoil Somoni Peak and situated in Tajikistan) .

Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, successfully reached the summit of Annapurna I at 8,091 metres (26,545 ft), the highest peak in the Annapurna Massif in Nepal on June 3, 1950. Annapurna became the highest mountain to have been ascended to its summit, exceeding that achieved by the 1936 expedition to Nanda Devi, and the mountaineers were the first to reach the summit of an 8,000-metre peak.

Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse in 1986, making him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders".

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.


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.


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

Of the 25 highest peaks of the world, 19 are in the Himalayas.

On a clear day, three of the world’s 10 tallest mountains are visible from Pokhara, Nepal’s second-biggest city.

The Himalayas cover 229,000 square miles.

Himalayas means "home of snow."

Lord Clydesdale flew a Westland PV-3 biplane over Mount Everest on April 3, 1933, the first ever flight over the mountain.  It was also the first detailed and scientific survey of the Himalaya region.


The highest bridge in the world is located in the Himalayas. It was built by the Indian Army, in 1982, and is about 5,600 meters above sea level.

Source New York Times

In 1852, stationed at the survey headquarters in Dehradun, Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest (then known as Peak XV)  as the world's highest mountain, using trigonometric calculations.

Four years later Andrew Scott Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India, calculated the peak of Mount Everest to be exactly 29,000 ft. Fearing that nobody would believe that this was the exact height and nothing more than an estimate, he publicly declared the height to be 29,002 ft.

Peak XV was named Mount Everest in 1865 after the former Surveyor General of India George Everest, despite his objections by the Royal Geographical Society. Andrew Scott Waugh was Everest's successor.

By Joe Hastings. wikipedia Commons

Sir George Everest pronounced his name as two syllables Eve-Rist, not the three-syllable E-ve-rest. He didn't want the mountain named after him—he worried that local Hindi speakers couldn't pronounce or write "Everest."

George Mallory may have been the first person to reach the summit of Everest. He was last seen 800 vertical feet (245 m) from the summit on June 8, 1924 but never returned. He carried a picture of his wife with him that he said he would leave at the summit which he did not have when his body was found 75 years later.

The 1924 British Mount Everest expedition; Mallory is highlighted

British soldier Maurice Wilson died on c. May 31, 1934 in an ill-fated attempt to climb Mount Everest alone. Wilson's plan had been to fly halfway around the world, crash-land on the mountain, and then walk to the summit despite having no experience in either mountaineering or aviation.

Everest was identified as the world’s highest mountain in 1952 from calculations made by the British Great Trigonometric survey.


New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. On May 29, 1953, Hillary and Norgay crossed a 40-foot vertical crack in the ice and struggled to the top of the earth, ending a two-month trek up the planet's coldest, wildest, most suffocating wilderness.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. By Jamling Tenzing Norgay - Wikipedia Commons

Hillary and Norgay were accompanied by a team of 400 people on their conquest of Everest. They included 20 sherpas and 362 porters carrying 10,000lb of baggage.

Jim Whittaker became was the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 1, 1963. He summited with the Sherpa Nawang Gombu (a nephew of Tenzing Norgay). Once there, Whittaker planted a US flag at the top.

blog.eddiebauer.com-

In 1969, The Beatles originally planned to have an album titled Everest. However, the Fab Four didn't want to travel all the way to Mount Everest for the LP cover photoshoot. This led to the title being  changed to Abbey Road, which was the street right outside their studio.

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 16. 1975. She was also the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent. Tabei created her own climbing equipment from scratch out of old curtains and the cover of her car,

The first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen was completed by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler on May 8, 1978. It was the first time anyone had been that high without bottled oxygen and Messner and Habeler proved what certain doctors, specialists, and mountaineers thought impossible.

In 1990, Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, became the first mountaineer to follow in his father's footsteps by climbing Everest.

33-year-old British mother Alison Hargreaves became on May 13, 1995 the first woman to conquer Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.

Swedish mountaineer Goran Kropp rode a bicycle 6,000 miles (9,700 kms) from Stockholm to the base of Mount Everest in 1996 with his mountain equipment, successfully climbed it solo and without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support, and then cycled back home.

32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2001.

American mountain climber Jordan Romero became on May 22, 2010, the youngest person to climb Mount Everest. He was 13 years 10 months 10 days old when he reached the summit. Jordan was accompanied by his father Paul Romero, his step-mother Karen Lundgren, and three Sherpas. When he got to the top of Everest, Jordan called his mom, telling her, "Mom, I'm calling you from the top of the world."

In 2012, a record 234 climbers scaled Everest on the same day — there was a queue for the summit, with some waiting two hours to get to the top.


On May 23, 2013, Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura became the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest at the age of 80.  While the climb up was difficult, Miura said the descent nearly killed him.

Miura was also the the first person to ski on Mount Everest. On May 6, 1970, he descended nearly 4,200 vertical feet from the South Col (elevation over 8,000 m (26,000 ft)).

The Hillary Step was a nearly vertical rock face with a height of around 12 metres (39 ft) located near the summit of Mount Everest. It gave climbers the last real challenge before reaching the top of the mountain via the southeast route. The Hillary Step collapsed during a massive earthquake that hit the region in 2015 and is no longer a feature on the mountain.

No one reached the summit in 2015 — for the first time in 41 years — when routes were closed after the Nepal earthquake. in 2015 nobody made it to the top of Mount Everest.

Everest climbing is a good source of income for Nepal, generating around $100 million a year.


In November 2020 Nepal and China announced a new measurement of the world’s tallest mountain: 29,031.7 feet (8848.8 metres) about three feet taller than previously thought.

The peak is known as Sagarmatha in Nepali and Chomolungma in Tibetan.

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

In 1999, GPS satellites showed that Everest was 7ft higher than had previously been thought.

Mt. Everest grows about 4 millimeters a year: the two tectonic plates of Asia and India, which collided millions of years ago to form the Himalayas, continue to press against each other, causing the Himalyan peaks to grow slightly each year.

The “Death Zone” is what climbers call the highest part of Mount Everest (everything above 26,247ft). Due to its lack of oxygen, the body literally begins to die, cell by cell. This can result in health risks like impaired judgement, altitude sickness and even heart attack or stroke.

Climbers who ascend Everest pay $530 (£330) for every canister of oxygen they use.

Over 5,000 climbers have successfully reached Mount Everest's peak.

There is a part of Mount Everest known as the Rainbow Valley. It is named not because there are rainbows there, but because of the brightly-colored jackets on the frozen corpses that litter the valley.

The summit of Mount Everest is about the size of two Ping-Pong tables.

In July, the warmest month of the year, the average temperature near the top of Mount Everest is -2 ° F.

Wind speeds can reach 200 mph while temperatures reach minus 60C.

Source Daily Express