Mount Everest Historical Timeline

Discovery and naming

Mount Everest was unknown to the outside world until 1852, when surveyors working on the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India identified it as the world's highest peak. The calculation is credited to Radhanath Sikdar, the survey's chief computer in Calcutta, who worked out a height of almost exactly 29,000 feet using data relayed from field stations in the Himalaya. His superior, Andrew Waugh, added two feet to the figure so it wouldn't look like a rounded estimate, and the peak's official height of 29,002 feet was announced in 1856 -- remarkably close to modern measurements.

The mountain had long been known locally as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Chomolungma ("Mother of the Universe") in Tibet, but in 1865 the Royal Geographical Society named it Mount Everest, after Sir George Everest, a former Surveyor General of India. Everest himself reportedly objected, preferring that mountains keep their local names.

The race to the summit

Early 20th-century expeditions made repeated attempts on the mountain. The 1924 British expedition remains one of climbing's great mysteries: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were last seen close to the summit before disappearing, and whether they reached the top before dying on the descent has never been confirmed. Nearly three decades later, on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to reach the summit, as part of a British expedition -- a milestone that made headlines around the world and turned Everest into the defining challenge of mountaineering.