NEW DELHI: The height of the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, is 8848.86 metres, Nepal and China on Tuesday jointly announced ending a long-standing debate about the height of the world’s tallest mountain.
The new height is 86 cm – a little less than 3 feet – more than the previous measurement, the country’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali said at a briefing on Tuesday.
The height of the mountain peak that straddles the Nepal-China border, was announced simultaneously by Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Kathmandu and Beijing, according to the Kathmandu Post.
“This is a historic day,” Foreign Minister Gyawali said, while making the much-awaited announcement on Tuesday.
Nepal had been working on measuring Mt Everest’s height since 2011.
The official Everest snow height of 8,848 meters (29,028 feet) was measured by the Survey of India in 1954.
The precise height of Mount Everest had been contested ever since a group of British surveyors in India declared the height of Peak XV, as it was initially called, to be 8,778 metres in 1847. (AGENCY)
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