We all know Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to summit Everest, right?
Well, not so fast. Hillary is the first man KNOWN to summit Everest. There may be more to the story.
And a hundred year old foot may change history as we know it.
One of the most enduring legends in mountaineering may be on the cusp of being solved:
Remains believed to belong to a British explorer who vanished more than 100 years ago while climbing Mount Everest have finally been found.
Andrew Comyn 'Sandy' Irvine, aged 22, disappeared along with the mountaineer George Mallory in June 1924. The pair were attempting to become the first people to scale the world's highest peak.
Here's the, er, artifact:
Andrew Irvine's middle name was Comyn, meaning a century-old sock on the mountain bearing the inscription "AC Irvine" seems pretty definitive.
Whether or not Irvine and Mallory did actually scale the peak is unknown; if they did, they would have beaten Sir Edmund Hillary to the top by nearly 30 years.
What's definitely known is that, even if they did reach the peak, they definitely didn't make it back down. Both vanished in 1924.
They were last seen around 1 p.m. on June 6, beginning the treacherous Second Step near the very peak of the mountain. That's considerably later in the day than you want to be summiting the peak of Mt. Everest — which might explain why they didn't make it down.
The question remains, however: Did they make it to the top? There is some compelling evidence that the pair did indeed summit the monstrous peak:
Firstly, Mallory's daughter had always said that Mallory carried a photograph of his wife on his person with the intention of leaving it on the summit when he reached it [22] and no such photograph was found on the body. Given the excellent state of preservation of the body and the artifacts recovered from it, the absence of the photograph suggests that he may have reached the summit and deposited it there.
Secondly, Mallory's snow goggles were in his pocket when the body was found, indicating that he died at night, that he and Irvine had made a push for the summit and were descending very late in the day. Given their known departure time and movements, had they not made the summit, it is unlikely that they would have still been out by nightfall.
There could still be 100% definitive evidence of the pair's success out there somewhere: The two had brought along two Vest Pocket Kodaks, neither of which were found with Mallory, meaning Irvine may have been in possession of them when he died.
Amazingly, there is a decent shot at recovering the photos out of that camera:
Experts from Kodak have said that there is a good chance that the cameras' black-and-white film could be developed to produce 'printable images,' due to its chemical nature and its likely preservation in subzero temperatures.
That would be quite a Kodak Moment to discover!
The fellow who discovered the boot, meanwhile,
[is] confident that more artifacts and maybe even the camera are nearby: 'It certainly reduces the search area.'
We'll keep you posted on this one.
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