MOUNT EVEREST HISTORY/FACTS:

Welcome to Mount Everest facts. In this site you will find many informative facts of Mt.Everest and a bit of history. Any facts or history bits you feel should be added, just send an e-mail as usual at the bottom of page..

Age of Everest:Everest was formed about 60 million years ago

Elevation: 29,035 (8850m)-found to be 6' higher in 1999

Name in Nepal: Sagarmatha (means: goddess of the sky)

In Tibet: Chomolungma: (means: mother goddess of the universe)

Named after: sir George Everest in 1865 ,the British surveyor-general of India. Once known as Peak 15

Location: Latitude 27° 59' N.....Longitude 86° 56' E It's summit ridge seperates Nepal and Tibet

irst Ascent: May 29,1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary, NZ and Tenzing Norgay, NP, via the South Col Route

First Solo Ascent: Aug. 20,1980, Reinhold Messner, IT, via the NE Ridge to North Face

First winter Ascent: Feb. 17,1980 -L.Cichy and K. Wielicki, POL

First Ascent by an American: May 1,1963, James Whittaker, via the South-Col
Mt. Everest rises a few milimeters each year due to geological forces

Everest Name: Sir George Everest was the first person to record the height and location of Mt. Everest, this is where Mt."Everest" got its name from(In american language)

First Ascent by a Woman: May 16,1975, Junko Tabei, JAP, via the South-Col

First Ascent by an American Woman: Sep.29,1988, Stacey Allison, Portland, OR via the South-East Ridge

First Oxygenless Ascent: May 8, 1978- Reinhold Messner, IT, and Peter Habeler, AUT, via the South-East Ridge

First woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest from both north & south sides: Cathy O'Dowd (S.A.) South May 25,1996/North '99

Fastest Ascent from South: Babu Chhiri Sherpa 34, NP-16 hours and 56 minutes (5-21-2000)

Fastest Ascent (north side): Hans Kammerlander (IT) May,24,1996, via the standard North Col Ridge Route, 16 hours 45 minutes from base camp

Youngest person: Temba Tsheri (NP) 15 on May,22,2001

Oldest Person: Sherman Bull May,25,2001 -64 yrs

First Legally Blind Person: Erik Weihenmeyer May,25,2001

Most Ascents: Eleven, 24th May 2000 Appa Sherpa became the first person to climb Everest 11 times-Ten, Ang Rita Sherpa, Babu Chiri Sherpa all ascents were oxygen-less.

Best and Worst Years on Everest: 1993, 129 summitted and eight died (a ratio of 16:1); in 1996, 98 summitted and 15 died (a ratio of 6½:1)

Highest cause cause of death: Avalanches-about a (2:1) ratio over falls

Country with most deaths on mountain: Nepal-46

Most dangerous area on mountain: Khumbu Ice Fall-19 deaths

First ski descent: Davo Karnicar (Slovenia) 10-7-2000

Last year without ascent: 1974

Last year without ascent: 1977

Corpses remaining on Everest: about 120

Longest stay on top: Babu Chiri Sherpa stayed at the summit full 21 hours and a half

Largest team: In 1975, China tackled Everest with a 410-member team.

Fastest descent: In 1988, Jean-Marc Boivin of France descended from the top in just 11 minutes, paragliding.Only climber to climb all 4 sides of Everest: Kushang Sherpa, now an instructor with Himlayan Mountaineering Institute

First person to hike from sea level to summit, no oxygen: 11th May 1990,Tim Macartney-Snape, Australian

Largest number to reach the top in one day:40, on May 10, 1993

First person to summit Everest twice: Nawang Gombu-Nepal(once with Whitaker in '63,and again two years later in '65)Gombu now works for the Himalayan mountaineering institute

The oldest woman to summit :Anna Czerwinska May 22, 2000.

Insurance

A large number of homogeneous exposure units. The vast majority of insurance policies are provided for individual members of very large classes. Automobile insurance, for example, covered about 175 million automobiles in the United States in 2004.[2] The existence of a large number of homogeneous exposure units allows insurers to benefit from the so-called “law of large numbers,” which in effect states that as the number of exposure units increases, the actual results are increasingly likely to become close to expected results. There are exceptions to this criterion. Lloyd's of London is famous for insuring the life or health of actors, actresses and sports figures. Satellite Launch insurance covers events that are infrequent. Large commercial property policies may insure exceptional properties for which there are no ‘homogeneous’ exposure units. Despite failing on this criterion, many exposures like these are generally considered to be insurable.

Definite Loss. The event that gives rise to the loss that is subject to the insured, at least in principle, take place at a known time, in a known place, and from a known cause. The classic example is death of an insured person on a life insurance policy. Fire, automobile accidents, and worker injuries may all easily meet this criterion. Other types of losses may only be definite in theory. Occupational disease, for instance, may involve prolonged exposure to injurious conditions where no specific time, place or cause is identifiable. Ideally, the time, place and cause of a loss should be clear enough that a reasonable person, with sufficient information, could objectively verify all three elements.

Accidental Loss. The event that constitutes the trigger of a claim should be fortuitous, or at least outside the control of the beneficiary of the insurance. The loss should be ‘pure,’ in the sense that it results from an event for which there is only the opportunity for cost. Events that contain speculative elements, such as ordinary business risks, are generally not considered insurable.

Large Loss. The size of the loss must be meaningful from the perspective of the insured. Insurance premiums need to cover both the expected cost of losses, plus the cost of issuing and administering the policy, adjusting losses, and supplying the capital needed to reasonably assure that the insurer will be able to pay claims. For small losses these latter costs may be several times the size of the expected cost of losses. There is little point in paying such costs unless the protection offered has real value to a buyer.

Affordable Premium. If the likelihood of an insured event is so high, or the cost of the event so large, that the resulting premium is large relative to the amount of protection offered, it is not likely that anyone will buy insurance, even if on offer. Further, as the accounting profession formally recognizes in financial accounting standards, the premium cannot be so large that there is not a reasonable chance of a significant loss to the insurer. If there is no such chance of loss, the transaction may have the form of insurance, but not the substance.

Calculable Loss:

There are two elements that must be at least estimable, if not formally calculable: the probability of loss, and the attendant cost. Probability of loss is generally an empirical exercise, while cost has more to do with the ability of a reasonable person in possession of a copy of the insurance policy and a proof of loss associated with a claim presented under that policy to make a reasonably definite and objective evaluation of the amount of the loss recoverable as a result of the claim.

Limited risk of catastrophically large losses. The essential risk is often aggregation. If the same event can cause losses to numerous policyholders of the same insurer, the ability of that insurer to issue policies becomes constrained, not by factors surrounding the individual characteristics of a given policyholder, but by the factors surrounding the sum of all policyholders so exposed. Typically, insurers prefer to limit their exposure to a loss from a single event to some small portion of their capital base, on the order of 5 percent. Where the loss can be aggregated, or an individual policy could produce exceptionally large claims, the capital constraint will restrict an insurer's appetite for additional policyholders. The classic example is earthquake insurance, where the ability of an underwriter to issue a new policy depends on the number and size of the policies that it has already underwritten. Wind insurance in hurricane zones, particularly along coast lines, is another example of this phenomenon.

How technology lifts Pixar's 'Up'

If you want to consider a difficult computational problem, try thinking of the algorithms required to animate more than 10,000 helium balloons, each with its own string, but each also interdependent on the rest, which are collectively hoisting aloft a small house.The production team at Pixar faced many new technological challenges on "Up," its tenth feature film.

That was the challenge the production team at Pixar faced when it set out to begin work on "Up," its tenth feature film, five years in the works, which hits theaters on Friday.

There was absolutely no way the team was going to hand-animate the balloons. Not with their numbers in five-figures, and especially not when you consider that within the cluster, every interaction between two balloons has a ripple effect: If one bumped another, the second would move, likely bumping a third, and so on. And every bit of this would need to be seen on screen.

In "Up," the story revolves around the main character, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen, who, frustrated with his mundane life, ties the thousands of balloons to his house and sets off for adventures in South America. A small boy ends up marooned on board, and hilarity ensues.

The cluster of balloons is so central to the film's branding--it's called "Up," after all--that to promote the film, Pixar teamed up with two of the world's cluster ballooning experts for a nationwide tour involving a real-life flying armchair and dozens of huge, colorful balloons.

"You have a movie that's about a house that flies, which is a pretty far-fetched idea," said Steve May, the supervising technical director on "Up." "We all know, from kids' parties, how a bunch of balloons behave, so if we could animate balloons in a realistic way, the believability that the house could fly would sell"