- Mount Whitney (Wikipedia)
Mount Whitney (Paiute: Tumanguya; Too-man-i-goo-yah) is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m). It is in East–Central California, on the boundary between California’s Inyo and Tulare counties, and 84.6 miles (136.2 km) west-northwest of North America’s lowest point, Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, at 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. The mountain’s west slope is in Sequoia National Park and the summit is the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail, which runs 211.9 mi (341.0 km) from Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley. The eastern slopes are in Inyo National Forest in Inyo County. Mount Whitney is ranked 18th by topographic isolation.
- Mikhail Gorbachev (Wikipedia)
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Russian politician and statesman who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country’s dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990 and the president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. He was the only Soviet leader born after the country’s foundation.
