what was the tallest mountain in the world before mount everest was discovered
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title: George Everest text: no direct connection with the mountain that bears his name, which he never saw. He was, however, responsible for hiring Andrew Scott Waugh, who made the first formal observations of the mountain, and Radhanath Sikdar, who calculated its height. Before its significance was realised, Mount Everest was originally known as Peak "B" and later as Peak XV. In March 1856, Waugh wrote to the Royal Geographical Society to announce that the mountain was believed to be the highest in the world, and proposed that it be named "after my illustrious predecessor", as it was "without any local name that we title: Mount Everest text: Qu Yinhua made the first reported ascent of the peak from the north ridge on 25 May 1960. The history of this area dates back to 800 BCE, when the ancient Kirati had their Kirata Kingdom in the Himalayan mountains . The Mahalangur range of the Himalaya is also known as Kirat area of eastern Nepal. In 1715, the Qing Empire of China surveyed the mountain while mapping its territory and depicted it as Mount Qomolangma no later than 1719. In 1802, the British began the Great Trigonometric Survey of India to fix the locations, heights, and names of the title: Mount Everest text: stationed at the survey headquarters in Dehradun, Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal, was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak, using trigonometric calculations based on Nicolson's measurements. An official announcement that Peak XV was the highest was delayed for several years as the calculations were repeatedly verified. Waugh began work on Nicolson's data in 1854, and along with his staff spent almost two years working on the numbers, having to deal with the problems of light refraction, barometric pressure, and temperature over the vast distances of the observations. Finally, in March 1856 he title: Mount Everest text: Mount Everest Mount Everest, known in Nepali as Sagarmatha () and in Tibetan as Chomolungma (), is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The international border between Nepal (Province No. 1) and China (Tibet Autonomous Region) runs across its summit point. The current official elevation of , recognized by China and Nepal, was established by a 1955 Indian survey and subsequently confirmed by a Chinese survey in 1975. In 2005, China remeasured the rock height of the mountain, with a result of 8844.43 m. There followed an argument between China and title: Mount Everest text: the local Tibetan name. The article argued that British colonialists did not "first discover" the mountain, as it had been known to the Tibetans and mapped by the Chinese as "Qomolangma" since at least 1719. In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government coined a Nepali name for Mount Everest, "Sagarmāthā" or "Sagar-Matha" (सागर-मथ्था, "goddess of the sky"). The height given is officially recognised by Nepal and China, although Nepal plans a new survey. In 1856, Andrew Waugh announced Everest (then known as Peak XV) as high, after several years of calculations based on observations made by the Great Trigonometric Survey.