On May 29th, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to successfully climb Mount Everest, the Himalayan mountain that stands 29,028 feet /8,847 metres above sea level and is thus considered the world’s tallest mountain.
Before 1865, however, there was no Mount Everest for them to climb. Oh, it was there, but it went by another name. Several, in fact. The people of Nepal called it Sagarmatha. To Tibetans it was Chomolungma. And to the British in charge of colonial India, it was just Peak XV, a name assigned to it in 1841, after its location was officially recorded for the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The survey was quite an accomplishment, and in 1865, the British honoured the surveyor general, George Everest, by naming Peak XV after him.
Time Travelling With Kids 