The gap between first and second on the summit of Everest, as reported by the only two people who were there, for the first several decades after they got back.
29 May 1953
Hillary and Tenzing left the high camp early and reached the summit at around 11.30 in the morning. They stayed about fifteen minutes.
Tenzing made small offerings in the snow. Hillary left a crucifix given to him by John Hunt, the expedition leader. They looked for evidence of Mallory and Irvine's 1924 attempt and found none. Then they descended.
Why the question mattered
The news reached London on the morning of the coronation of Elizabeth II. That timing turned the ascent into an imperial story in the British press, whether the climbers wanted it or not.
Meanwhile Nepal and India both wanted Tenzing recognised as the first man on the summit, for reasons that had a great deal to do with the end of empire and very little to do with mountaineering.
The crowds in Kathmandu were large and the pressure was real. Tenzing was pushed towards signing statements, in at least one case a document he was not able to read.
The agreement
The two men agreed not to answer. The formula they both used, for years, was that they had reached the top together, as a team, on the same rope.
This was not evasion for its own sake. Any answer would have converted one of them into a passenger, and would have been picked up immediately by people with an argument to make about nationality and race.
The eventual answer
In his later writing Hillary stated that he had been a couple of paces ahead. Tenzing, in his own account, said the same. By the time either said it publicly, the political heat had gone out of the question and neither man could be diminished by it.
The photograph that does not exist
Hillary took the famous picture of Tenzing on the summit, ice axe raised with the flags of Britain, Nepal, India and the United Nations.
There is no photograph of Hillary on the summit. Tenzing had never used a camera, and Hillary judged that the top of Everest was not the place to teach him.
Why it goes on a wall
Because two men on a rope worked out, faster than the governments and the newspapers did, exactly what would be done with the answer, and refused to supply it.
Together, as one.