Mount Everest is a mountain in the Himalayas and with a height of 8848 m the highest mountain on earth. It belongs to the 14 eight-thousanders and to the Seven Summits. Mount Everest has been named after the British land surveyor George Everest since 1856. In Nepal the mountain is called Sagarmatha, in Tibetan Qomolangma (German pronunciation "Tschomolangma"), Chinese/Mandarin 珠穆朗瑪峰, Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng.
Mount Everest is located in the Mahalangur Himal in the Khumbu region of Nepal on the border with China (Tibet Autonomous Region); the western and south-eastern ridges of its three summits form the border. On the Nepalese side it is part of the Sagarmatha National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On the northern side, it is part of the Qomolangma National Nature Reserve, which corresponds to the Qomolangma Biosphere Reserve designated by UNESCO.
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay succeeded in the first ascent of the "third pole" on 29 May 1953. On 8 May 1978 Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed the summit for the first time without additional oxygen. To date (end of 2018), the summit has been reached by mountaineers about 8400 times. Over 300 mountaineers have lost their lives on the way there or back.
While Mount Everest is the highest elevation above sea level, there are two other mountains that deserve the title "highest mountain on earth". Measured from the foot of the mountain, this is the volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and from the centre of the earth, the Chimborazo in Ecuador.