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Highest points of countries

  • Mount EverestMount Everest stands 8,848.86 metres above sea level, according to the most recent measurement, a joint survey by Nepalese and Chinese authorities. The summit sits on the border between the two countries, so neither could simply announce a…
  • Mount ElbrusMount Elbrus is a dormant volcano, and Europe's highest peak. Its last eruption is dated to around AD 50.
  • Mount KilimanjaroMount Kilimanjaro first entered European records as a puzzle about a color. On the 11th of May 1848, the German missionary Johannes Rebmann noticed that the top of one of the Jagga mountains seemed to wear a beautiful white cloud. He asked…
  • K2K2 earned its grimmest reputation from one remark by George Bell, a climber on an American expedition to the mountain. "It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you," he said. K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth. It rises in the…
  • Mount OlympusNo recorded person stood on top of Mount Olympus until 1913. Greeks had long thought Zeus lived there.
  • Mount AraratMount Ararat is a snow-capped, dormant volcano in the far east of Turkey. In a 2024 poll in Armenia, 86 percent of respondents said that seeing it stirs strong emotions. Yet the mountain lies outside Armenia's borders. How did a peak in a…
  • Mount FujiMount Fuji rises 3,776.24 meters above the island of Honshu, and on a clear day people in Tokyo, about 100 kilometers to its northeast, can see it. It is the tallest mountain in Japan. It is also the seventh-highest island peak on Earth,…
  • Mont BlancMont Blanc has a summit that nobody can measure once and for all. Its crown is a thick dome of ice and snow, and the thickness of that dome shifts over time. Surveyors can state the height on a given day, but never for good. The mountain…
  • DenaliDenali, the tallest peak on the continent, recorded a temperature of -75.5 degrees Fahrenheit on the 1st of December 2003. The reading came from an instrument station high on its slopes in the Alaska Range, in the interior of the U.S.…
  • KangchenjungaKangchenjunga rises 8586 metres above sea level on the border between Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim. On the 25th of May 1955, two British climbers named Joe Brown and George Band worked their way up its final slopes and stopped just…

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