For decades, the world's highest peak, Mount Everest, had defeated every attempt to conquer it. Then, on May 29, 1953, two men stood before a nearly vertical, 40-foot rock face just below the summit. This final obstacle would later be named the 'Hillary Step'. Edmund Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, an experienced Sherpa climber from Nepal, were part of a British expedition determined to succeed where all others had failed. Using cutting-edge oxygen equipment for the ti