First ascent of Everest
Hillary and Tenzing on the roof of the world
On 29 May 1953 the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay of John Hunt's British expedition became the first to stand on the world's highest summit. They spent about fifteen minutes on top; Tenzing left offerings to the gods in the snow. The news reached London on the day of Elizabeth II's coronation.
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Did you know
Spring 1953: the structure of DNA was published on 25 April, and on 29 May Hillary and Tenzing reached the top of Everest.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 14 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 8 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 6 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 5 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 4 years earlier
Europe
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 25 years earlier
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 20 years earlier
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 17 years earlier
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 12 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — same year
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 12 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 11 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 8 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 4 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 8 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 21 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 5 years earlier
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 3 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 5 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 7 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 10 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 14 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 24 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 6 years earlier
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 2 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 16 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 17 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 17 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 12 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 11 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 1 year later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 6 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 79)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 75)
- Albert Einstein (aged 74)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 72)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 64)
- Mao Zedong (aged 60)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 35)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 24)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 23)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 19)