Before Mt. Everest was discovered, which was the highest mountain in the world?

We all know that Mt. Everest is the highest mountain in the world.

Now answer this question: Before Mt. Everest was discovered, which was the highest mountain in the world?
There are four options given.

• Mt. Aconcagua
• Mt. Everest
• Kanchenjunga
• Mount Kilimanjaro

Now, even as you rack your brains, we tell you the correct answer. It is Mt. Everest!
How? Well, even before it was discovered, Mt. Everest was the highest mountain in the world. Just that it was not discovered!

If you play Muqaabla, the quiz game app, you will come across many such trick questions. These will not have the most obvious answer. They will require you to think out of the box. And only then you can get the right answer!
What a quiz game also does, it adds to your general knowledge.

How high is Mt. Everest?

Mt. Everest is the highest mountain on earth at 8,848 meters. In feet Mt. Everest is 29,029 ft high.
How high is 29,029 feet? Commercial flights fly at an altitude of 35,000 to 40,000ft. So you literally fly higher than Mt. Everest every time you fly.

Now let us look at this in perspective. Darjeeling is 6.700 ft high. So Mt. Everest is more than 4 times higher than Darjeeling.

Why climbing Mt. Everest is tough

What is the big deal, in climbing Mt. Everest you may ask? The big deal is that you one goes higher, the oxygen in the air decreases. This makes it very difficult to breathe, let alone walk or climb.

Wait, that is not exactly correct. Air contains about 20.9 per cent oxygen at all altitudes. However at high altitudes the air pressure is lower. So one feels there is less oxygen. Each altitude thus has an effective oxygen level which varies.
At 6,000 ft the effective oxygen level is 16.6 per cent.
At 10,000 ft it is 14.3 per cent.
At 15,000 ft it is 11.8 per cent.
At 20,000 ft, it is 9.7 per cent.
At 25,000 ft, it is only 8.1 per cent.
At 29,000 ft, which is the height of Mt. Everest, it is just 6.9 per cent!

Climbers carry oxygen cylinders for this very purpose. But oxygen cylinders are heavy and need to be carried by the climbers themselves. It is possible to adjust the amount of oxygen one is breathing. So they have to be very careful that they use it properly and in limited measure. Otherwise they would run out of oxygen.

Another interesting fact here. More than 4,000 people have climbed Mt. Everest. But only 200 have done it without oxygen. Phu Dorjee, a sherpa, was the first Indian to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen.

Talking about other high mountains, K2 is the second highest mountain in the world at 28,251 ft above sea level. Mt. Kanchenjunga at 28,169 ft is the third highest mountain in the world.

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