Word: machine
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Since 1841, Mt. Everest (29,000 ft.), in the Himalayas, has reigned as the highest peak in the world. It has never been climbed.* But a few pilots thought they had seen a higher one among the Amne Machin Mountains of West China. When peripatetic Pen-Manufacturer Milton Reynolds went looking for such a peak (TIME, April 12), he ran into trouble with the Chinese government, failed to get anywhere or prove anything. Last week, another expedition quietly took off from a hard-packed loess runway at Lanchow to make the first recorded flight directly over the Amne Machins...
Pilot Chin circled and zigzagged over the range (most of the time at 18,000 ft.), found no competitors for Mt. Everest. The tallest peak he saw (22,000 ft.) was not among the Amne Machins but in the Kuolo range near by. Tallest Amne Machin peak observed: 19,000 ft. Drawled Chin: "I never thought those mountains were very high. But I didn't expect they'd be that damn...
Undeterred, Chicago's Milton Reynolds, manufacturer of ballpoint pens (". . . writes high in the stratosphere . . ."), together with the Boston Museum of Science, arranged an expedition that would explore the hitherto entirely unexplored Amne Machin range. Reynolds was out to discover the world's highest mountain (which some believe may be located in the Amne Machin), expressed the hope that a grateful China would name it after...
...will. One day, the Reynolds plane took off, supposedly to go to the U.S. via Tokyo. When it returned to Shanghai after 14 hours, Bradford Washburn, director of the Boston Museum of Science, exclaimed: "Well, I'll curl up and die! He must have flown over the Amne Machin range...
Catching his breath in Tokyo, Reynolds said: "Now we are back in God's country-at least Americans run it." Americans still do not run the Amne Machin, which will continue to listen to its ode twice a month...