MOUNT KILIMANJARO HISTORY

Kilimanjaro, with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is an inactive stratovolcano in north-eastern Tanzania rising 4,600 m (15,092 ft) from its base (and approximately 5,100 m/16,732 ft from the plains near Moshi), and is additionally the highest peak in Africa at 5,892 metres (19,331 ft), providing a dramatic view of the surrounding plains.

Mount Kilimanjaro was formed during the most recent faulting of 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 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, Ptolemy, 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 missionary, Johannes Rebmann, while venturing inland in a bid to convert the tribes to Christianity, sighted the snow-capped mountain from Tsavo but his report was met with ridicule until 1861 when Dr Otto Kersten and Baron Karl Klaus von der Decken scaled the mountain to a height of 4300 metres. The first Europeans to reach the summit were Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller 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 novel, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. On 1st January 2000, a thousand people watched the first sunrise of the new millennium from the peak.


Source : wikipedia, kilimanjarotrekkers