Edmund Hillary

Discover

John F. Kennedy as a boy with his family

What Did We Call America’s Elite Before the “1 Percent”?

Orange basketball on black background and with low key lighting. Homepage 2010, arts and entertainment, history and society

The 10 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time

Artist interpretation of a Space meteoroid impact. Meteor impact. Asteroid, End of the world, danger, destruction, dinosaur extinct, Judgement Day, Planet Earth, Doomsday Predictions, comet

10 Failed Doomsday Predictions

Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1855), founder of the house of Rothschild; lithograph by Friedrich Lieder, c. 1830.

Where Do Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories About the Rothschild Family Come From?

Thanksgiving Turkey with all the sides

Why Do We Eat Turkey on Thanksgiving?

A human Inuit skull in a stone chambered cairn in Ilulissat in Greenland. These ancient graves are pre christian and are at least 2000

14 Tough Questions Answered

Santa Claus flying in his sleigh, christmas, reindeer

Was Santa Claus a Real Person?

Edmund Hillary Article

What was Edmund Hillary’s early life like?

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Edmund Hillary began climbing in New Zealand’s Southern Alps while in high school, before working as a beekeeper during the summers and climbing mountains during the winters. After military service in World War II, he joined a party to the central Himalayas in 1951 and later joined a mountaineering team planning to climb Mount Everest.