Edmund Hillary summits Everest
- When
- 29 May 1953
- Where
- Auckland · Tāmaki Makaurau
- Reach
- Nationwide
An Auckland beekeeper and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest, and the news arrived in London on the morning of the Queen’s coronation.
Hillary’s line on getting down — that they had knocked the bastard off — became the most quoted sentence in New Zealand history, and the self-deprecating tone of it did as much for the national self-image as the climb. He spent the following decades building schools and hospitals for Sherpa communities through the Himalayan Trust, and appears on the five-dollar note. Neither he nor Tenzing ever publicly said who stepped up first.
Regions affected
Sources
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