Tuesday Turnip

It's time for another whimsical Tuesday Turnip search wherein I type a random phrase and we see what kind of interesting factoids "turn-up."

Today I typed in "mountaineer" + "seven summits" unearthing the following curious tidbits:

Richard Bass, an American businessman and amateur mountaineer, set himself the goal of climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, including mainland Australia. He hired David Breashears to guide him up Everest, the most difficult of his Seven, and completed his Everest summit on April 30, 1985. He then co-authored the book Seven Summits, which covered the undertaking Rebecca Stephens is the first woman to have climbed Everest and she is also the first English-speaking woman in the world to have climbed the Seven Summits. The Everest assault made [Ken] Noguchi the youngest person to scale the highest mountain on each continent -- the Seven Summits. On Apr. 15, deaf mountaineer Heidi Zimmer gave a lecture detailing her quest to climb the world's "Seven Summits" before members of the Holy Cross community"¦. Zimmer has already conquered three of the peaks - McKinley, Elbrus and Kilimanjaro - and is the first deaf woman to have climbed each. The quest to climb the highest mountain on each continent offers a challenge and demands great determination. As of January 2005 only 81 people have climbed the seven summits with Carstensz and 91 people with Mount Kosciuszko. About 40% of them climbed both Carstensz and Mount Kosciuszko. My name is Jack Jakobczyk and I would like to invite you to join my Seven Summits Quest. On the following pages you will find some information about the summits and detailed description of my progress. There are several arguments that plea for the Kosciuszko or the Carstenz Pyramid to be the Seventh Summit: If one defines the geographic zone that includes Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and certain Pacific islands, as Australasia or Oceania, then Carstenz Pyramid is certainly the highest peak in Australasia. If Australia on its own is a continent on itself, then most regard Kosciuszko as the highest peak, but there are other who consider mountain 2745 metres named as the Big Ben on a small stormy island Heard Island, deep in the Southern Ocean as the Seventh Summit. As Carstenz Pyramid lies in the Western New Guinea, also known as Irian Jaya, it politically does not belong to Australia but to Indonesia. And Indonesia is part of Asia.

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