Mount Kilimanjaro - Kenya

Mount Kilimanjaro was formed during the most recent faultingof the Rift valley two to three million years ago, an event that also led to the formation of Mount Kenya. Kilimanjaro was certainly an active volcano 100,000 years ago when the crater below
kibo Peak was formed. The glaciers around the peak probably began to form some 11,700 years ago.
However, it is thought that due to global warming they will have melted within another 20 years. It is possible that the snow-capped Mountains of the Moon described the Greek geographer, Ptolemn, in the second century AD referred to Mount Kilimanjaro. In the sixth century Chinese sailors returned home with tales of a great inland mountain, but Kilimanjaro remained something of an enigmatic legend to non-Africans well into the nineteenth century.
In 1848, the German missionar, Johannes Rebmann, while venturing inland in a bid to convert the tribes to Christianity, sighted th snow-capped mountain from Tsavo but his report was met with redicule until 1861 whn Dr Otto Kersten and Baron Karl Klasu vonder Decken scaled the mountain to height of 4300 meters.
The first Eurpoenans to reach summit were Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtschelloer in 1889.
Mawenzi peak was first climbed in 1912.
The mountain has retained a legendary and almost mystical aura throughout the twentieth century. In 1938 Ernest Hemingway enhanced this when he wrote his classic nowel, te Snows of Kilimanjaro. On 1st January 2000, a thousand people watched the first sunrise of the new millennium from the peak.