Edmund Hillary was born on 20 July 1919 in Auckland. A New Zealand mountaineer and philanthropist, Hillary worked as a beekeeper before taking up climbing in the Southern Alps and the Himalayas. On 29 May 1953, as part of a British expedition led by John Hunt, he and the Sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay became the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. He was knighted soon after. He later reached the South Pole overland in 1958 as part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Through the Himalayan Trust he devoted much of his later life to building schools, clinics and bridges for the Sherpa people of Nepal, and he served as New Zealand's high commissioner to India.
Before and after
- from 19 May 1919 to 24 July 1923Turkish War of Independence
- 23 May 1919Founding of University of California, Los Angeles
- from 5 June 1919 to 23 June 1919Battle of Cēsis
- 28 June 1919Treaty of Versailles
- 20 July 1919Birth of Edmund Hillary
- 29 August 1919National Library of Latvia
- 10 September 1919Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
- 18 October 1919Birth of Pierre Trudeau
- 22 October 1919Birth of Doris Lessing
More in Exploration & discovery
- from 8 August 1914 to 1 January 1917Expedition Endurance
- 6 January 1919Death of Theodore Roosevelt
- 18 June 1928Death of Roald Amundsen
- 5 August 1930Birth of Neil Armstrong
- 9 March 1934Birth of Yuri Gagarin
- 6 March 1937Birth of Valentina Tereshkova
The era
This moment belongs to the Modern era (1914 CE to 1945 CE), world wars and a changing world. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.