The Himalayan Mountains, which run along the northern border of India, are home to the world's highest mountain peaks such as Mount Everest and Kanchenjunga. This mountain range is also the source of two major river systems -- the Indus Basin and the Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin.
The Tsushima Strait is a strait between the Korean Peninsula and Kyushu, the furthest west of the four largest islands of Japan. Approximately 60 miles in width, it connects the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan. The Strait of Tsushima was the site of a great naval battle between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War.
At 8,850 meters (29,035 ft), Mount Everest, in Nepal, is not only the tallest mountain in Asia, it's the tallest mountain in the world. In Nepali, Everest is called Sagarmatha or "Forehead of the Sky" and in Tibetan it is known as Qomolangma or "Mother of the Universe". In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return to tell about it. However, 29 years earlier, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, two British climbers, had set out to accomplish the same feat. Although they died at some point on their journey, Noel Odell, the expedition's geologist, witnessed the duo climbing not far from the summit at 12:50 pm on June 8, 1924. In 1999, Mallory's body was discovered just below the Second Step. The general consensus among climbers has been that the pair never reached the summit, and there is no evidence of either man above the Second Step, but if Mallory made it that far he likely summited as there are no technically difficult climbs beyond that point. It is now believed that he may have died from a short fall during his descent.
Hiroshima is the site of the Peace Memorial Park and the eternal Peace Flame which is never to be extinguished until all nuclear weapons are dismantled. On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was the target of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a populated area. Over 100,000 people were killed, and many more were the slow victims of radiation poisoning. Ninety percent of the city was decimated by the bomb. Although most of the city has been rebuilt since that time, a gutted section was set aside as "Peace City" to provide a horrifying reminder of the effects of an atomic weapon.