Today is a significant day for two reasons: first, it is Lydia's birthday, so a very happy birthday to Lydia! Poo! Woo hoo!
And second, it is the 50th anniversary of the First Ascent of Mount Everest, or Chomolungma as it is called in Tibetan (which means Mother Goddess of the World- it is also called Sagarmatha by the Nepalis). MSNBC news has a few articles on Everest related stuff to mark the day. And in case you're new, here is a link to an entry I made a few weeks ago on the 1996 Everest disaster.
Now I will tell you about the legendary Willi Unsoeld, a charismatic imp of a man who was part of the first American expedition to summit Everest, forty years ago in 1963. He and Tom Hornbein were, if I recall correctly, the first climbers to conquer the more difficult West Ridge. And they were the first Americans to get to the top. Laurence Leamer writes in his biography of Unsoeld, Ascent, of their time on the summit:

Willi and Tom did not try to talk. They were full of an understanding beyond understanding. They turned off the oxygen and stood looking down on the world. Within the beauty of the moment they felt loneliness. Within the roar of the wind they felt silence. Within the glory they felt fear, not for their lives, but for the unknowns that weighed down on them. Within the triumph, they felt disappointment that this, only this, was Everest, the summit of their dreams. They knew that there were higher summits still if they could only see them.

The climb cost Willi his toes, which froze solid and had to be amputated. In fact, mountains would claim his life and the life of his daughter as well. He named his daughter Nanda Devi, after the Hindu goddess of joy. In 1976 they decided to climb Nanda Devi the mountain, a Himalayan peak in India that stands at 25,645 feet. Failing to properly acclimatize to the altitude, Nanda Devi Unsoeld died on her namesake mountain. Willi died a few years later in an avalanche on Mt. Rainier.
Kind of depressing, eh? But they died living the life they chose, doing what they loved. There are worse fates.
You can read more in Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition, written by expedition member John Roskelley.