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Comment by DeBraid | Hacker News Reader

To emphasize your point, I'm well familiar w/ Sir Edmund, but TIL about Tenzing Norgay, thank you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzing_Norgay

In New Zealand, despite our somewhat child-like at times desire to be known on the world stage, we all largely know and acknowledge about Tenzing Norgay as well as Hillary - which is exactly what Sir Ed wanted.

They only have a photo of Norgay at the summit because Norgay didn't know how to take a picture of Hillary.

Kind of ironic to me that the less famous one is the only one with the photo! Ha!

Source? As I recall, Edmund stated he just didn't think of it in the heat (actually: cold) of the moment. They were only on the summit for a few minutes.

I'd be very surprised if a man of Tenzing's calibre and achievements could not figure out something so trivial.

Edit: I've found some citations that support your point, I apologize.

Although, I'd add (a) Tenzing's account states that he offered to take a photo but was declined. And (b) a more fair description would be "because he had never used a camera before" rather than "didn't know how to work a camera".

The later suggesting a lack of intelligence or civility (though I'm sure that wasn't your intent), I'm probably just nitpicking :-).

There is also mysticism in some Asian cultures about photos and taking other peoples photos around stealing souls etc.

This potentially could be a reason as well that he wasn’t brave enough to admit.

But at the same time he allowed a photo of himself to be taken (his soul be stolen)?

That theory doesn't make sense to me.

funny thing is that the first "who wants to be a millionaire" winner in Germany had him as million [Deutsche Mark] question ("who climbed the mount everest with Edmund Hillary" or something like that). And that's why his name has always stuck in my head. However, it also goes to show that he is less famous than Hillary.

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