The 29th May 1953 was the date on which a New Zealander Edmund Hillary and a Nepalese Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, the first ever people to do so.
The news was relayed back to the base camp of the success and the Times correspondent there sent the following message back to London – “Snow conditions bad. Advanced Base abandoned yesterday”. It was, of course, a coded message so that anyone who saw it would not be able to scoop the paper on its story. It read, to those who knew the pre-arranged code, “Summit reached-Hillary-Yesterday”. The news was broken in London on the morning of June 2nd, the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Sir Edmund Hillary 1953. By Photographer unidentified. Retouched by TimofKingsland. – Pascoe, John Dobree, 1908-1972. Edmund Percival Hillary. Ref: 1/2-020196-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22676310, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20034296Tenzing Norgay. By Edmund_Hillary_&_Sherpa_Tenzing.jpg: Kete Horowhenua : Horowhenua Historical Society Inc. derivative work: Elviper (Edmund_Hillary_&_Sherpa_Tenzing.jpg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Hillary, Tenzing and Colonel Hunt (the expedition leader) were all honoured by the British, Indian and Nepalese governments for their achievement.
I am semi-retired after a career in medical sciences. I now work from home doing independent research and consultancy amongst other things. One advantage of this is that I do have time to indulge my interests including birdwatching, natural history, steam trains and history particularly ancient history.
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