How can a mountain have the highest point on Earth without being the world's biggest mountain? With a boost from the Earth's equatorial bulge.

Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is 20,564 feet high, compared to Mount Everest's 29,029-feet height. The Earth is round, but not a perfect sphere, and is actually flatter at the poles with bulge around the Equator, hence the equatorial bulge. Because of its location on the equator, Mount Chimborazo is 7,000 feet higher in the sky than Mount Everest, and the Ecuadorian mountain's summit is the farthest from Earth's core than any other mountain.