What is the significance of the date 2 June 1953?

In London a moment of historic pageantry was celebrated on this day-the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was also the day when London heard the news of the conquest of Mount Everest’s 9,608 m by Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tensing, the famous Sherpa porter from Nepal. The London Times wrote:

‘Seldom since Francis Drake brought the Golden Hind to anchor in Plymouth Sound as a British explorer offered to his Sovereign such a tribute of glory as Colonel John Hunt (leader of the expedition) and his men are able to lay at the feet of Queen Elizabeth for her Coronation day.’ The queen sent a message to the Everest expedition expressing her ‘warmest congratulations on [their] great achievement’.