Get to Know Tenzing Norgay, the Other Man to Climb Mt Everest

On May 9, 1986, Tenzing Norgay, Tibetan climber who was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 71.

"Tenzing Norgay's Legacy

"It has been a long road...From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax," Tenzing Norgay once said. Of course, Tenzing could have said "from a child sold into servitude," but he never liked to talk about the circumstances of his childhood.

Born into grinding poverty, Tenzing Norgay quite literally reached the summit of international fame. He became a symbol of achievement for the new nation of India, his adoptive home, and helped numerous other South Asian people (Sherpas and others alike) gain a comfortable lifestyle through mountaineering.

Probably most importantly to him, this man who never learned to read (though he could speak six languages) was able to send his four youngest children to good universities in the U.S. They live very well today and give back to projects involving the Sherpas and Mount Everest."