Hillary Clinton’s not-namesake passes away

Sir Edmund Hilary, New Zealand’s famed climber and conqueror of Mount Everest, passed away today (hat tip - JWF). He was 88.

He was also a victim of an embarrassing Hillary Clinton whopper. Hilary scaled Everest in 1953. Hillary Clinton claimed for more than a decade that she was named after the climber–even though she was born in 1947, six years before he rose to worldwide prominence.

She finally admitted the lie in October 2006. In typical Clintonesque fashion, her campaign blamed her poor mother.