Today marks one hundred years ago Sir Edmund Hillary was born. Te Papa recently acquired a pendant featuring a rock Sir Edmund Hillary collected from the first successful summit of Mt Everest / Chomolungma. History curator Stephanie Gibson tells us more.Read more
At the height of summer the sun does not set at Union Glacier. In mid-November it’s bright ‘daylight’ throughout the night, but the sun does disappear for a couple of hours in the early morning (2-4 am) when it dips behind nearby Mt Rossman. This is when the mercury dipsRead more
Continuing our series of blogs to mark the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to New Zealand, I thought I would touch on one of the lesser known royal visits of the past, that of William’s grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, in December 1956. The relative obscurity ofRead more
Sixty years ago, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain (29 May 1953) The two men’s mountaineering triumph came just a few days before Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. Their feat boosted the rejoicing that was already takingRead more
53 years ago – Sir Edmund Hillary reaches the South Pole (4 January 1958) 54 years ago – Scott Base opens in Antarctica (20 January 1957) Having reached the summit of Everest with Tenzing Sherpa in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary completed another extreme feat in January 1958. Early in theRead more
