On this day in 1988, Stacy Allison of Portland, Oregon, became
the first American woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest,
which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth.
Allison, a member of the Northwest American Everest Expedition, climbed the Himalayan peak using the southeast ridge route.
At least 168 climbers and support staff died in attempts to reach
the top of Everest in the 20th century.
1955
Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October
2, 1998)
Gene Autry, perhaps the greatest singing cowboy of all time,
was born on September 29, 1907, in Tioga, Texas.
While still a boy, Autry moved with his family to a ranch in
Oklahoma where he learned to play the guitar and sing.
The young Autry was quickly attracted to a new style of music
that was becoming popular at the time, which combined the
traditional cowboy music popular in Texas and Oklahoma and
the folk songs, ballads, and hymns of southern-style country
music.
Known as country-western, the new sound was popularized by musicians from the East Coast and the South who had never
been near a horse and couldn’t tell a stirrup from a lariat.
Donning cowboy hats and boots and affecting what they thought
were western drawls, hundreds of these newly minted “cowboys”
were soon crooning popular western ballads like “Tumbling
Tumble Weeds” all around the nation.
