At 11:30 in the morning on May 29, 1953, two climbers stood on top of the world. They were Edmund Hillary, a tall beekeeper from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer from Nepal. Beneath their boots was the summit of Mount Everest, 29,032 feet above sea level - higher than any other point on the planet. They hugged. Tenzing planted ice axes flying the flags of the United Nations, Nepal, Britain, and India. Hillary took a photo of Tenzing, but no photo of himself. They stayed at the top for only 15 minutes before starting back down.
Getting there had taken weeks. The British expedition had set up camp after camp up the mountain, working through freezing nights and screaming winds. Earlier attempts had failed by just a few hundred feet. Hillary and Tenzing had spent the night before in a tiny tent at 27,900 feet, melting snow for water, the wind battering them. In the morning, they put on heavy oxygen tanks and climbed a steep wall of rock now known as the Hillary Step. Tenzing had failed to reach the top six times before with other teams. This time, he made it.
The news reached London on June 2, the very day the new queen, Elizabeth II, was being crowned. The whole country celebrated two triumphs at once. Hillary was knighted; Tenzing received high honors in Nepal and India. The two men remained close friends for life and always insisted they had reached the summit together, never saying who stepped onto it first. Since 1953, more than 6,000 people have climbed Everest, but the mountain still claims lives every year. The first ascent remains one of the great adventures of the 20th century - and a reminder that the highest places on Earth still demand respect.
