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If people are dying on Mount Everest now, how did the first climbers scale it 66 years ago?

Mt. Everest is back in the headlines and not for good reasons.

Mount Everest has come back into the international spotlight and not for good reasons. 

Nearly a dozen people have died in the past week while attempting to climb Mount Everest. The number of deaths reportedly surpasses the death toll from the entire 2018 climbing season.

Hundreds have been waiting in a traffic jam to reach the summit. All climbers' skill vary in degrees of experience.

Credit: AP
In this photo made on May 22, 2019, a long queue of mountain climbers line a path on Mount Everest. About half a dozen climbers died on Everest last week most while descending from the congested summit during only a few windows of good weather each May. (Nirmal Purja/@Nimsdai Project Possible via AP)

What was once a large-scale expedition has become an every day occurrence. 

Coincidentally, as the masses descend upon Mount Everest, the month of May marks the anniversary of the first humans to record climbing the world's highest mountain.

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In 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made the first climb on behalf of England. 

Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sardar Tenzing Norgay, right, of Nepal and Edmund P. Hillary of New Zealand, left, show the kit they wore when conquering the world's highest peak, Mount Everest, at the British Embassy in Katmandu, capital of Nepal, on June 26, 1953. Edmund Hillary, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, reached the 29,035-foot summit of Everest on May 29, 1953, becoming the first person to stand atop the world's highest mountain. (AP Photo)

It was an ascent hundreds of years in the making. Numerous climbers died and continue to face tragic circumstances while attempting the same feat.

O May 9 1953, Hillary and Norgay stood on the literal top of the world. Since then, reportedly over 4000 people have made the climb.

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