Ed Hillary leaves us

I have to laugh at the thought that Everest was summited only 16 years before Neil Armstrong strode onto the Moon.

Four descents have been achieved. The first was the manned descent by Swiss-designed, Italian-built, United States Navy-owned bathyscaphe Trieste which reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on 23 January 1960, with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard on board.[12][21] Iron shot was used for ballast, with gasoline for buoyancy.[12] The onboard systems indicated a depth of 11,521 m (37,799 ft), but this was later revised to 10,916 m (35,814 ft).[22] The depth was estimated from a conversion of pressure measured and calculations based on the water density from sea surface to seabed.[21]

This was followed by the unmanned ROVs Kaikō in 1996 and Nereus in 2009. The first three expeditions directly measured very similar depths of 10,902 to 10,916 m.

The fourth was made by Canadian film director James Cameron in 2012. On 26 March, he reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the submersible vessel Deepsea Challenger.