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Adventure · Edmund Hillary

Edmund Hillary and the photograph he isn't in

At 11:30 on 29 May 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest.

The film plays from YouTube. Open on YouTube

The famous summit portrait shows Tenzing. Hillary was behind the camera. This short follows the setbacks, frozen boots and last rock step that brought both men there, then the coded message that became Coronation Day news. Their different memories of the missing Hillary portrait are presented without inventing a motive.

How we made thisArchive footage and photographs, checked against the original sources. Full credits are listed with the film on YouTube.

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