Explorers Mount Everest

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country’s future. Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or “Mother Goddess of the Land,” by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia. The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain. A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who quipped when later asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest, “Because it’s there.” Since Hillary and Norgay’s historic climb, numerous expeditions have made their way up to Everest’s summit. In 1960, a Chinese expedition was the first to conquer the mountain from the Tibetan side, and in 1963 James Whittaker became the first American to top Everest. In 1975, Tabei Junko of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit. Three years later, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria achieved what had been previously thought impossible: climbing to the Everest summit without oxygen.

History Iwo Jima Flag

When six U.S. Marines raised a flag over Iwo Jima in February 1945, they were laying claim to the slopes of a mountain, part of a strategically important chain of volcanic islands south of Tokyo. The Ogasawara Islands, also known as the Bonin Islands, were largely uninhabited. But during World War II, they offered a place where the invasion of Japan could be staged. The islands themselves weren’t empty—they were home to thousands of Japanese people, many of them with British and American ancestry. And, the American victory turned most of them into refugees over the next 23 years of U.S. occupation. In 1962, the United State abruptly gave the islands back to Japan. As the islands once again fell under Japanese control, islanders reconnected with their long-lost friends and family members and refugees returned. Even years after the handover, some Ogasawara residents are ambivalent about the change. “There are people who are very sad about the handover,” Yoko Tahashi, who lives in Chichijima, told the Japan Times’ David McNeill. “They don’t think of themselves as either Japanese or American, and feel that they have been cast aside. I feel sympathy for both sides.”

Steve Jobs 1983

Steve Jobs giving IBM the finger in 1983!

Los Angeles 1926

Photo Legend History

Los Angeles, 1926 – Alerted by the smell of a broken bottle of liquor, Federal Agents inspect a “lumber truck”.