Hillary Declined His Summit Photo

On May 29, 1953, Nepalese-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary became the first confirmed climbers to reach Mount Everest's summit in the Himalayas. Hillary took Tenzing's famous summit photograph, but Tenzing wrote that Hillary declined his offer to photograph him in return, leaving no summit portrait of Hillary. British expedition leader John Hunt called the ascent a team achievement and said they had reached the top together. In his 1955 autobiography, however, Tenzing revealed that Hillary stepped onto the summit first and he followed.

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