This day in History

#1 1953
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, 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. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. 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.
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

#2 ** 1917**
John F. Kennedy is born
One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on this day in 1917. He was the first American president to be born in the 20th century.

In 1935, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard University and received a degree in international affairs with honors in 1940. While there, he suffered a debilitating back injury that would have life-long repercussions. After college, Kennedy served on a Navy PT boat in World War II. In 1952, he won a seat in the House of Representatives and then served in the Senate for seven years beginning in 1953. Also in 1953, he married the lovely Jacqueline Bouvier. In subsequent years, Kennedy underwent several dangerous spinal operations; it was during his recuperation from one such operation that he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning history Profiles in Courage. Unfortunately, the operations never succeeded in curing his persistent back pain and, for the rest of his life, Kennedy took a powerful combination of pain killers, muscle relaxants and sleeping pills, a fact he successfully hid from the public. The pain, however, did not prevent him from becoming a rising Democratic star in the Senate; he ran for the presidency in 1960.