On July 20, 1919, Edmund Hillary is born in Auckland,
New Zealand. A beekeeper by trade, Hillary became the first human, along
with Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, to reach the peak of Mount Everest
on May 29, 1953. At 29,035 feet, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain
on Earth, as well as one of the most forbidding.
Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas
in Asia, at the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or
"Mother Goddess of the Land," by the Tibetans, the English named the
mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of
South Asia. The summit of Everest reaches two-thirds of the way through
the air of the earth's atmosphere--at about the cruising altitude of jet
airliners--and oxygen levels there are very low, temperatures are
extremely cold, and weather is unpredictable and dangerous.
The
first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British
expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau
to the foot of the great mountain before being forced to turn back by a
raging storm. Over the course of the next two decades, nine more
expeditions attempted the climb, with varying degrees of success.
Finally, in 1952, two members of a Swiss reached 28,210 feet, just below
the South Summit, but had to turn back for want of supplies.
Shocked
by the near-success of the Swiss expedition, a large British expedition
was organized for 1953 under the command of Colonel John Hunt. In
addition to the best British climbers and such highly experienced
Sherpas as Tenzing Norgay, the expedition enlisted talent from the
around the British Commonwealth, such as New Zealanders George Lowe and
Edmund Hillary, the latter of whom worked as a beekeeper when not
climbing mountains. Members of the expedition were equipped with
specially insulated boots and clothing, portable radio equipment and
open- and closed-circuit oxygen systems.
On May 26,
Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon launched the first assault on the
summit and came within 300 feet of the top of Everest before having to
turn back because one of their oxygen sets was malfunctioning. Two days
later, Tenzing and Hillary set out, setting up high camp at 27,900 feet.
After a freezing, sleepless night, the pair plodded on, reaching the
South Summit by 9 a.m. and a steep rocky step, some 40 feet high, about
an hour later. Wedging himself in a crack in the face, Hillary inched
himself up what was thereafter known as the Hillary Step. Hillary threw
down a rope, and Norgay followed. At about 11:30 a.m., the climbers
arrived at the top of the world.
News of the
success was rushed by runner from the expedition's base camp to the
radio post at Namche Bazar, and then sent by coded message to London,
where Queen Elizabeth II learned of the achievement on June 1, the eve
of her coronation. The next day, the news broke around the world. Later
that year, Hillary and Hunt were knighted by the queen. Norgay, because
he was not a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, received the lesser
British Empire Medal.
Hillary has since written
several books and remains active in environmental causes and with the
Himalayan Trust, an organization he founded for the betterment of the
Sherpa people. In recent years, he has been critical of the mounting
debris left on Everest by the ever-increasing numbers of people making
summit attempts, as well as the well-publicized failures of climbers to
come to the aids of others in distress on the mountain.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sir-edmund-hillary-born [20.07.2012]
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