The names of the peaks have an interesting history. Everest was named after the British Surveyor-General to India. Initially it had the uninspiring name of Peak XXV. First climbed in 1953 by Tenzing and Hillary, it lies in the Khumbu Himal range.
 K2 is called so because it was the second peak in the Karakoram Range of the Himalayas to be measured. K1 goes to another peak called Masherbrum (~7900m) which appeared to be higher since it was much closer to the surveyor (Montgomerie). K2 is also named after the English topographer Henry Godwin-Austen who first explored the region (Called Mt. Qogori by the Chinese since it's drained by the Qogori glacier which becomes the Shaksgam river). It was first climbed in 1954. It is often rated as the hardest 8000m mountain to climb with 164 successful summitteers and 48 fatalities. Just like Everest has the very popular South-East ridge route, so does K2, also called the Abruzzi spur after the Italian duke who first stepped on the spur in the late 19th century (but did not get very high). For a very brief time in 1986, K2 held the title of the tallest mountain in the world because a brief, uncertain measurement using GPS gave it a higher elevation than Everest. This was quickly dispelled by a follow-up expedition led by the same Italian team which first climbed the mountain in 1954. Amazingly, the measurements of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India in the early and mid-19th century has been verified by current technologically advanced measurements as being accurate to within a few metres !
 Kanchenjunga - 1955 (Nobody is permitted to climb to the summit of Kanchenjunga since it is a holy mountain. The closest one can get is about 100m from the summit). Lhotse - 1956 Makalu - 1958 Cho Oyu - 1954. Annapurna was the first of the 8000m peaks summited in 1950 by a French team led by Maurice Herzog. Clearly the 1950's were the golden age of climbing.
