Today is Chimborazo Day. Here are 10 facts about Chimborazo:
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First of all, what is it? Answer: an inactive volcano in the Andes, located in Ecuador, 150 km (93 mi) south-southwest of Quito.
Its elevation is 6,263 m 20,549.4 ft, and it’s Ecuador’s highest mountain, and the 16th highest in the world.
Or is it? Depending on how you’re measuring the height of Mountains, it might actually be the highest. If you’re measuring from sea level then Mount Everest is the highest. However, if you measure from the centre of the Earth, thanks to the planet bulging slightly at the equator, Chimborazo is 2.1km taller. The summit of Chimborazo is 3,968 miles (6,384.4 kilometers) from the centre of the Earth. Chimborazo is only one degree south of the equator, while Mount Everest is 28 degrees north.
Linguists haven’t been able to reach a consensus on the origin of the name. Possibilities include "the snow on the other side", “Mountain of Ice” or “Women of Snow”.
It last erupted 1,400 years ago, around 550 A.D.
Its crater is 820 feet deep and has a surface diameter of 1,600 feet.
Chimborazo has four major summits: Whymper, the highest point at 20,702ft/6,310m; Veintemilla 20,561ft/6,267m; Politecnica, 19,094ft/5,820m; and Nicolas MartÃnez 18,274ft/5,570m. The latter was named after the father of Ecuadorian mountaineering.
Baron Alexander von Humboldt, Aime Goujaud AKA Bonpland, and Carlos Montufar made the first recorded attempt to climb it in 1802. However, they had to turn back at 19,286 feet (5,878 meters) due to altitude sickness.
The first successful climb was in 1880 by Edward Whymper, who made the first ascent of The Matterhorn. His party included Italian guides Louis and Jean-Antoine Carrel. They were the first Europeans to summit a mountain higher than 20,000 feet.
Chimborazo is featured on the Ecuadorian coat of arms, to represent the beauty and richness of the Ecuadorian Sierra (Highlands).
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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