Asimov’s Everest Bet Implodes

In 1953, Isaac Asimov wrote the short story "Everest," predicting that climbing Mount Everest was impossible and that the first human to reach its summit would have to be parachuted in. He completed the story only a month before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay successfully reached the summit on 29 May 1953. When "Everest" finally appeared in print seven months later, its central claim had already been spectacularly disproved.

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