Regret the Error

An obituary Friday about Sir Edmund Hillary, who with Tenzing Norgay became the first to scale Mount Everest, misidentified the route they took to the summit. It is the South Col, not the South Tor. In comparing the feat to one by Charles A. Lindbergh, the obituary misstated Lindbergh’s accomplishment. Though he was the first to make a solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, in 1927, he was not the first aviator to make the nonstop crossing; John W. Alcock and Arthur W. Brown did so together in 1919, from Newfoundland to Ireland. In addition, the precedents for Sir Edmund’s reaching the South Pole in 1957-58 were referred to incorrectly. Robert Falcon Scott reached the pole in 1912, and the United States built a base there in 1956; Sir Edmund was not the first to reach the pole since Roald Amundsen in 1911. Link