Top 10 moun­tains facts

Chimborazo, Ecuador, elevation 6,268 m (20,564 ft). Chimborazo location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center. Despite being 2,580 m (8,465 ft) lower in elevation above sea level than Mount Everest, it is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's center.

Brocken spectre. A Brocken spectre or mountain spectre, is the apparently enormous and magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the surfaces of clouds opposite the sun. The head of the figure is often surrounded by the glowing halo-like rings of a glory—rings of coloured light that appear directly opposite the sun when sunlight meets a cloud of uniformly-sized water droplets. The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside or cloud bank.

Name of the Karakoram Range. The name K2 is derived from the notation used by the Great Trigonometric Survey. Thomas Montgomerie numbered the most prominent peaks of Kararkoram K1 to K35. Next, these were replaced by local names, but K2 appeared not to have acquired a local name, possibly due to its remoteness.

Scandinavian Mountains. The whole Scandinavia experiences uplift as a result of post-glacial rebound. In northern Europe, this is clearly shown by the GPS data obtained by the BIFROST GPS network. The average uplift is less than 1cm/year, but it may accumulate to 400m during next 10,000 years.

Approx 3700 m (12000 ft). Gunnbjørn Fjeld is Greenland's highest mountain. It is a nunatak, a rocky peak protruding through glacial ice. The mountain is named after Gunnbjorn Ulfsson, the Viking who was the first European to reach Greenland.

Russia. Two characteristic peaks of Mt Elbrus have two volcano craters. The eastern peak has an enormous crater 250m in diameter.

Cape Town. The central area of Cape Town is called City Bowl. It is enclosed by near vertical cliffs of 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high Table Mountain, and Devil's Peak and Lion's Head on either side.

It is not known. After the success, journalists persistently repeated the question which of the two men had the right to the glory of being the first one, and who was merely the second, the follower. Colonel Hunt, the expedition leader, declared: "They reached it together, as a team."

William Shakespeare first used this word in a play "Cymbeline" in 1611.

Eiger. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high (5,900 ft) north face of rock and ice, named Eigerwand or Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. The Eiger has been highly publicized for the many tragedies involving climbing expeditions.