A couple April Fools jokes got wide spread coverage thanks to the Internet.
Harry at 7summits sent out an email proclaiming K2 as the new world's highest.
http://mounteverest.net picked it up and it got on the wire.
Here's the original
http://7summits.com post:
We just received information from the Nasa Geo team (backed up by this news source) that Everest has been remeasured using GPS and satellite laser technologies. The new measurements show that Everest is not 8850m high, but 8712.8m.
What's more, using the same technique (and the same satellite, so error is not in the tools) K2 is not 8611m, but 8738.5m.
This means that Everest is no longer the highest mountain on earth !!!
So K2 is the highest mountain in Asia and therefore one of the seven summits! This has serious consequences for the 7summits list: we are currently cross-checking the K2 summitlist with our combined 7summits statistics to see what the new list will look like. We should have the news lists up sometime tonight, but one thing is for sure, it will be way smaller as only a handfull of the seven summiteers have climbed K2.
It appears that Reinhold Messner was the first to climb the 7summits after all!
Already the bookings for K2 have taken a huge flight and many businessmen, lawyers and doctors are trying to get in on the K2 season this summer to secure their place in the lists.
http://7summits.com/forum/index.php?topic=381.msg1220;topicseen#msg1220
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http://allafrica.com posted the following note about Kilimanjaro:
The Kenya government has entered discussions with Tanzanian authorities for the return of Mt Kilimanjaro. Dr M Zaha, an undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yesterday confirmed that the issue had been brought up with Tanzanian authorities and would soon be discussed by the East African Community's Council of Ministers in Arusha.
In 1886, when the governments of Germany and Britain agreed on a border to officially define their territories, the line they drew - from Lake Victoria to the coast - was perfectly straight, broken only by an untidy curve around the mountain. It has long been believed the British monarch Queen Victoria granted Kilimanjaro to her German grandson, Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert (later Kaiser Wilhelm II) in 1886. The East African Standard was able to independently establish that an earlier handover proposal based on this historical account failed after the British Foreign Office disputed its accuracy.
Further research by the ministry established that the mountain was actually ceded to the Society for German Colonisation, run by German explorer Dr Karl Peters, by various Chagga chieftains in Tanganyika. Discussions are expected to centre around the validity of these treaties. Dr Zaha added that the Ministry does not expect any resistance to the plan from Tanzania as the Wachagga have long regarded the mountain to be cursed. We were unable to reach Tourism Minister Raphael Tuju for comment
http://allafrica.com/stories/200404010151.html
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