History Commons^™

50th Anniversary Of The Everest Conquest And The Everest Obsession, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

The second of June is the anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England. On that same day in 1953 news arrived in London that Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit of Mount Everest a few days earlier on May 29th. It seemed like a fortuitous convergence of events celebrating resurgent British Imperial power. In fact it was but an illusion, a false echo of past glory for a fading empire economically drained by the ravages of war.