Today is a very important day in the Royal Calendar as it marks the 60th year since the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Many of you may remember the Diamond Jubilee celebrations last year. The difference between the Diamond Jubilee and this year's 60th Coronation anniversary is to do with when the crown was physically placed on the Queen's head. Although Queen Elizabeth II wasn't formally crowned until June 2, 1953, she immediately became Britain's monarch upon the death of her father, King George VI, on February 6, 1952, hence why there are two celebrations!
'The Queen was accompanied by more than 20 members of her family, including the Duke of Edinburgh.' [...] 'Other royals present include Prince Harry, the Duke of York, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Lady Louise Windsor, the Princess Royal and Zara Phillips with her husband, rugby player Mike Tindall.'1
Click on the image below to read more and see pictures of this wondrous ceremony.
60 years ago today Mount Everest was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
To the British, Everest has always been "our mountain". In the 19th century, British geographers mapped it, measured it and named it. In the 20th, British pilots were first to fly over it and in 1953 a British team was first to climb it. When, by sheer luck, news of their ascent reached London on the eve of the Coronation, Everest's place in our cultural history was fixed for ever.
Since 1953 many other British mountaineers have climbed Everest and a number of them have scored important firsts.
In 1975, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston made the headlines with the first ascent of Everest's south-west face on an expedition led by Chris Bonington.
The 1975 expedition was the sixth attempt on Everest's treacherous south-west face. "It was just another logical step in the development of any mountain," Bonington says. "First the easiest route, then the harder ridge, then the much harder ridge and then you go on to the faces."
Kenton Cool, a mountain guide, has been part of Everest's commercial explosion for the past decade. He's been to Everest every year since 2004 and is the first Briton to have climbed Everest 10 times - and to have tweeted from the summit. His clients have included Ranulph Fiennes, the oldest Briton to climb Everest, and Bonita Norris, the youngest British woman to have done so.
Six decades after it was conquered, mountaineers complain that the summit of Mount Everest has become virtually gridlocked with climbers, but this has not dampened climbers enthusasim to climb the world's most famous mountain.
