Showing posts with label Everest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Everest. Show all posts

January 11 – National Unity Day in Nepal

Posted on January 11, 2018

The fellow who unified modern Nepal was born a loooong time ago:

295 years ago, to be exact!

King Prithvi Narayan Shah is sometimes called the Father of the Nation. 


People gather in Kathmandu, the capital city of this small Asian country, to honor Prithvi Jayanti - also known as National Unity Day. There are rallies and banners and
placards, flowers to lay at the feet of the King's statue, and renewed promises to make every group, every language, every ethnicity and culture in Nepal even stronger.

Here are some things that make Nepal special:

REALLY tall mountains!


Even though Nepal is a small nation, it has eight of the world's tallest ten mountains!!! People come from all over the world to see and/or climb these amazing peaks.



Including, of course, the famous Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. (The Tibetan name for Everest is Chomolungmain, and the Nepali name for it is Sagarmatha.)

Nepal has never been under direct foreign rule, including never being actually colonized...probably because of the high mountains and the difficulty of conquering and holding a very mountainous nation. Even the mighty British Empire just made a peace treaty with the rulers of Nepal. Nepal ended up being a "buffer zone" between two big powers - Imperial China and British Colonial India.

Nepal is shown in red on this map.


Remember all that diversity of groups, languages, ethnicities, and cultures I talked about above? Well, Nepal is described as having more than 80 ethnic groups and more than 120 different languages - even though it is smaller than my state of California!!


As for religions, most Nepali people follow Hinduism, and Nepal is home of a famous temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. Hindus from all over the world to visit this Pashupatinath Temple. 


Also, Nepal is considered the traditional birthplace of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama. People come from all over the world to make pilgrimages to this birthplace, Lumbini.


Have you noticed that "people come from all over the world" a lot? Yes, tourism is an important aspect of Nepal's economy - but it would be a more important factor if the country were more stable politically.

For more on Nepal, check out this earlier post.

Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , , , ,

April 3 – First Flight Over Mount Everest

Posted on April 3, 2017

Do you know what the highest mountain in the world is?

Now, picture flying over it in the early 1900s. In one of these:



The Scottish nobleman named Douglas Douglas-Hamilton (who eventually became the 14th Duke of Hamilton, the Keeper of Holyroodhouse, and the 11th Duke of Brandon) led the kind of life in which you get the best schooling, you earn "a Blue" in boxing as well as the Scottish Amateur Middleweight title, you get to be a Member of Parliament without having to get elected, and you are appointed honorary colonel of a battalion of your nation's army.

And you have a lot of names! Not only did this particular nobleman have two "Douglas"s in his name, and not only did he become "Duke of" two different titles and "Keeper of" one, before he became the Duke, he was called Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale, and he was called Lord Clydesdale.

But Hamilton didn't just sit down and enjoy a cushy life. He went to work athis family's mine, for a while, joining a Trades Union and calling himself "Mr. Hamilton," so he would be able to experience the sort of life his family's employees experience.  Also, he learned to fly airplanes when they were still pretty new-fangled, and he joined the world's first Air Force -  the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force in the 1920s. (Remember, the Wright Brothers famously flew the first controlled, powered flights in late 1903; the RAF was founded in 1918, and Hamilton got his first RAF commission in 1927.

This isn't Hamilton, or his family's
 mines. But it is a Scottish miner
 from around that time.
When Hamilton was just 28 years old, he became the youngest squadron leader of his day.

So perhaps it is not too surprising that Hamilton was bold enough to participate in the Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition. (It's called the Houston Expedition because it was sponsored by Lucy, Lady Houston. In other words, she paid the bills.)

This 1933 expedition required flying higher than any before. Hamilton (Lord Clydesdale) was chief pilot in the first flight over Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, and a fellow named D. F. McIntyre was the co-pilot. It was so extremely difficult to fly in such heights - with such little oxygen in the atmosphere - that people realized that they needed to invent pressurized cabins for airplanes.

Hamilton was decorated with the Air Force Cross for this feat. He was considered a genuine hero.

Here are some of the scenes that Hamilton must have seen during his flight:






Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

May 29, 2011 - First humans climb Mount Everest!

 – 1953

The tallest mountain on Earth? More than 29,000 feet high? People have died trying to climb it?

There is a certain class of human who sees those things as challenges to be eagerly faced and mastered.

I am not that sort of human.

But New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are, and on this day they became the first known humans to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.

Anyone climbing Mount Everest has to deal with wild weather and strong winds, altitude sickness, and lack of oxygen.

Hillary and Norgay were experienced climbers, and for most of their climb they were following routes set by others who hadn't quite made it to the top. They were part of a British expedition led by John Hunt, and they succeeded in making the summit only on their second attempt, following an unsuccessful attempt by two other team members who came close to summiting—just 300 feet away!—and who no doubt contributed to Hillary's and Norgay's success because they blazed the trail and left caches of extra oxygen.

They were the first, but definitely not the last...

By 2008, about 2,700 people had climbed Mount Everest—some achieving the summit multiple times. However, more than two hundred people have died in the attempt. Most corpses have been left where they fell, and some can be seen from the most-used climbing routes!

Some of the Mount Everest climbing records include:

1978 – first ascent without oxygen tanks (Messner, from Italy, and Habeler, from Austria)
1980 – first solo ascent (Messner)
1980 – first winter ascent (Zawada, Cichy, and Wielicki, from Poland)
2005 – first helicopter landing (Delsalle, from France)
2008 – oldest person (Sherchan, from Nepal, age 76 and 11 months)
2010 – youngest person (Romero, from U.S.A., age 13)

Nepali Apa Sherpa has climbed the mountain more times than anyone else, 21 times!

Find out more...

Scholastic has a bio, photo essay, and other info about Hillary and Norgay's successful climb.

Read one modern mountaineer's story of an unsuccessful attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest—there are lots of cool photos, colorful insights into the people who live near this most famous mountain, and a sensible outlook about following one's dreams and knowing when to quit. 

Do a Mount Everest jigsaw puzzle and quiz. 
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)