Sir Edmund Hillary RIP

The news yesterday brought us some sad tidings. Sir Edmund Hillary, 88, died of a heart attack.

Hillary had always been a hero of mine, not only for his incredible accomplishment of scaling Sagarmatha (a/k/a Mt Everest -- back when it was only 29,002 feet -- it's "grown" some 33 feet since then) but more importantly for his insistence over the intervening years that he was not the "first man" to scale the mountain.

No, Sir Edmund right from the start gave equal billing to his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay. Sir Edmund always insisted that he was only one of two men to reach the summit.

This is one reason that the Nepalese always held him in such high regard.

So what does the news media do when they announce his death? You guessed it: "First Man Atop Everest".