In June 1924, a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew "Sandy" Irvine set off for the summit of Mount Everest and disappeared—two more casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date. Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's was never found—until now. An expedition led by National Geographic Explorer and professional climber Jimmy Chin—who won an Oscar for the 2019 documentary Free Solo, which he co-directed—has located a boot and a sock marked with Irvine's initials at a lower altitude than where Mallory's body had been found.

The team took a DNA sample from the remains, and members of the Irvine family have volunteered to compare DNA test results to confirm the identification. “It’s an object that belonged to him and has a bit of him in it,” Irvine’s great-niece Julie Summers told National Geographic. "It tells the whole story about what probably happened. I'm regarding it as something close to closure.” //

A Chinese climber reported stumbling across "an English dead" at 26,570 feet (8,100 meters) in 1975, but the man was killed in an avalanche the following day before the report could be verified. //

phat_tony Ars Centurion
18y
302
Subscriptor
It would certainly be amazing if anything is ever found that makes it conclusive whether or not they made it. For anyone familiar with the details, it is entirely plausible that they did make it and beat Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by 29 years. It's just impossible to tell if they died on the way up or the way down.

One bit of - admittedly entirely inconclusive - evidence is that George Mallory had a photograph of his wife with him in his pocket which he intended to leave at the top if he made it. When his body was discovered in 1999, the photo was no longer in his pocket.

Now, who knows. Maybe when things got desperate, he needed something else from his pocket and just floundered desperately for it with frozen hands, beyond caring that the picture of his wife fell out and blew away when he was near death. Or after his fall, his body was broken and death was imminent, but he wasn't quite dead and pulled the photo from his pocket to look at as he died, then it blew away. Who knows? The missing photo is far from proof. But it's some indication he may have made it.

It'll be amazing if that camera ever turns up, with film that can still be developed, and it has a picture from the summit. //

RSwan Smack-Fu Master, in training
2m
1
Selethorme said:
IIRC there's some contention that the Chinese got to the top of the mountain first (before the known Edmund Hillary summiting) and the camera would prove whether or not Mallory and Irvine got there first.

You can get to Everest from the Nepal side, or the Chinese/Tibetan side. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (can't forget him) climbed the Nepal side (they did it first). Mallory and Irvine tried the Chinese side. The Chinese are the first known to successfully climb the Chinese side. That was a Communist party effort. If Mallory and Irvine did successfully climb Everest from the Chinese side, that would mean the Chinese are no longer the first to climb Everest from the that side. In theory that would mean a loss of prestige to the Chinese if you believe those sort things. //

arjalon Ars Centurion
12y
345
llanitedave said:
More Everest climbers die on the descent than on the ascent. About 56%.

To be expected. People think climbing to the summit is the hardest part.

The hardest part is that the whole mountain is trying to kill you. People are exhausted on the way back down and are careless as the physical exhaustion/limitations catches up. Saying "Failure is not an option" is not accurate in places where failure and death is the default. Survival is an option.

More than 86 percent of healthcare providers surveyed across the US are experiencing shortages of intravenous fluids after Hurricane Helene's rampage took out a manufacturing plant in western North Carolina that makes 60 percent of the country's supply.

IV fluids are used for everything from intravenous rehydration to drug delivery. The plant also made peritoneal dialysis fluids used to treat kidney failure. //

In one bright spot in the current disruptions, fears that Hurricane Milton would disrupt another IV fluid manufacturing plant in Florida were not realized this week. B. Braun Medical’s manufacturing site in Daytona Beach was not seriously impacted by the storm, the company announced, and production resumed normally Friday. Prior to the storm, with the help of the federal government, B. Braun reportedly moved more than 60 truckloads of IV fluid inventory north of Florida for safekeeping. That inventory will be returned to the Daytona facility, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

This is a short-term forecast of the location and intensity of the aurora. This product is based on the OVATION model and provides a 30 to 90 minute forecast of the location and intensity of the aurora. The forecast lead time is the time it takes for the solar wind to travel from the L1 observation point to Earth.

One would think that removing noncitizens from your voting rolls would be a smart thing to do to ensure a fair election in November—but the Harris-Biden Department of Justice evidently disagrees.

They’re suing the state of Virginia on technical grounds—it’s too close to the election for such procedures, they say. //

DKnight
an hour ago edited
The “quiet period” makes no sense from a legal or moral standpoint. All it does is announce to the public that people who are ineligible to vote can slide in under the radar as long as they do their registration inside that 90 day period. This same DOJ demands states also allow same day registration is limiting their ability to correct any ineligible registrations.

Imagine what would happen if the Feds announced that between 3 am and 6 am, cops are not allowed to be patrolling the streets and no crimes would be investigated. What do you suppose will happen?

Venture capitalist David Magerman, who previously donated $5 million to the University of Pennsylvania, halted his financial support of the institution shortly after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. His decision was prompted by the school’s refusal to take action against the spread of antisemitism on campus and its failure to protect Jewish students from members of the pro-Hamas crowd, which held numerous demonstrations on the premises while threatening Jewish students.

Magerman recently announced that he plans to reallocate the funds he previously sent to UPenn to five Israeli colleges in $1 million increments. These include Tel Aviv University, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Bar-Ilan University, and Jerusalem College of Technology.

“I don’t see much value generated by giving to American universities. I think that liberal colleges in America are flawed institutions that are doing a poor job of preparing students for the real world,” he told Fox News.

Magerman urged other donors to follow his lead, arguing that universities are not “reformable.”

Asked what his message is to other prominent Jewish donors still contributing to Ivy League schools, Magerman said pointedly, "Stop." He said it's naive to believe that elite U.S. universities are "reformable."

"They're fulfilling the mission they want to fulfill. Their goal, it seems, is to indoctrinate their students to question the validity of Western civilization, to question the value of the Founding Fathers and to criticize Western society. I don't think that's what these philanthropists believe and I don't think that they should be donating money to support propagating that ideology," said Magerman.

Other high-profile donors have taken similar steps. Ross Stevens, CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, canceled a $100 million donation to UPenn in December over similar concerns.