I think Randymar claimed that Armstrong did not walk on the moon.
I put “Armstrong on the moon” on that list because it falls into the same category of “human achievement of earthshattering proportions”. Armstrong stepping on the moon is only the tip of the iceberg of a massive team effort of hundreds of engineers, technicians, medical staff, accountants and even politicians. Just like Hillary and Tenzing summitting Everest, there was an entire team that helped put them there…sure they had to do the final part themselves, but make no mistake that it was a team effort…same Chuck Yeager…the common thread for 3 of the items I listed was a huge goal, that no one previously achieved, requiring a massive well oiled machine firing on all cyclinders and the bravery to actually risk trying it knowing that you could die trying (yes for Armstrong, yes for Hillary, yes for Chuck Yeager).
Bannister, on the other hand is an example of human breaking through mental barriers. Up to then, the common notion was that 4 minutes was beyond the realm of human performance EVER.
Kind of cool that the year after Hillary got to Everest, Bannister did his sub 4 miles…now sub 4 mile is “nothing”…here is the Wikipedia account:
The 4-minute mile 
* * Blue plaque recording the first ever sub-4-minute mile run by Roger Bannister on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track.
This historic event took place on May 6, 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford. It was watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds up to 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) prior to the event, Bannister had said twice that he favoured not running, to conserve his energy and efforts to break the 4-minute barrier; he would try again at another meet. However, the winds dropped just before the race was scheduled to begin, and Bannister did run. His time was 3 min 59.4 s. Two other runners, Brasher and Chataway, provided pacing whilst completing the race. Both went on to establish their own track careers. The race was broadcast live by BBC Radio and commented on by Harold Abrahams, of “Chariots of Fire” fame.
The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, who went on to publish and edit the Guinness Book of Records. He famously “teased” the crowd by drawing out the announcement of the time Bannister ran as long as possible:**
“ “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the one-mile: 1st, No. 41, R.G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which - subject to ratification - will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire, and World Record. The time was 3…” ”
The roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement.
The claim that a 4-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth cooked up by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile, 1955. The reason the myth took hold was that 4 minutes was a nice round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years—longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of World War II in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries. Note that the Swedish runners Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson, in a series of head-to-head races in the period 1942–45, had already lowered the world mile record by 5 seconds to the pre-Bannister record. (See World record progression for the mile run.) What is still impressive to knowledgeable track fans is that Bannister ran a 4-minute mile on very low-mileage training by modern standards.
Just 46 days later on June 21 in Turku, Finland, Bannister’s record was broken by his rival John Landy of Australia, with a time of 3 min 57.9 s, which the IAAF ratified as 3 min 58.0 s due to the rounding rules then in effect.
** edit]** Bannister vs Landy “The Miracle Mile”*
On August 7, at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, B.C., Bannister, running for England, competed against Landy for the first time in a race billed as “The Miracle Mile”. They were the only two men in the world to have broken the 4-minute barrier, with Landy still holding the world record. Landy led for most of the race, building a lead of 10 yards in the third lap (of four), but was overtaken on the last bend, and Bannister won in 3 min 58.8 s, with Landy 0.8 s behind in 3 min 59.6 s. Bannister and Landy have both pointed out that the crucial moment of the race was that at the moment when Bannister decided to try to pass Landy, Landy looked over his left shoulder to gauge Bannister’s position and Bannister burst past him on the right, never relinquishing the lead. A larger-than-life bronze sculpture of the two men at this moment was created by Vancouver sculptor Jack Harman in 1967 from a photograph by Vancouver Sun photographer Charlie Warner and stood for many years at the entrance to Empire Stadium; after the stadium was demolished the sculpture was moved a short distance away to the Hastings and Renfrew entrance of the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) fairgrounds. Regarding this sculpture, Landy quipped that “While Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back, I am probably the only one ever turned into bronze for looking back.”
Bannister went on that season to win the “metric mile”, the 1,500 m, at the European Championships in Berne on 29 August, with a championship record in a time of 3 min 43.8 s. He then retired from athletics to concentrate on his work as a junior doctor and to pursue a career in neurology.
He later became the first Chairman of the Sports Council (now called Sport England) and was knighted for these services in 1975. Under his aegis, central and local government funding of sports centres and other sports facilities was rapidly increased, and he also initiated the first testing for use of anabolic steroids in sport.
** edit]** Training anecdote*
As a medical student at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, Roger Bannister chose to use his lunch hour for a 9 minute jog to Paddington track, where he ran 10 X 400 m in about 60 s with two minutes rest, then he ran back to work. The whole procedure took 46 minutes, leaving him 14 minutes to eat his lunch.
John Landy ran the “Miracle Mile” with 4 stitches in his foot from stepping on a burst flash bulb before the race. It is in keeping with the spirit of the man that he never used this as an excuse for his defeat in this memorable race.
** edit]** Legacy*
On the 50th anniversary of running the 4-minute mile, Bannister was interviewed by the BBC’s sports correspondent Rob Bonnet. At the conclusion of the interview, Bannister was asked whether he looked back on the 4-minute mile as the most important achievement of his life. Bannister replied to the effect that ‘no, he rather saw his subsequent forty years of practicing as neurologist and some of the new procedures he introduced as being more significant’. His major contribution in academic medicine was in the field of autonomic failure, an area of neurology focusing on illnesses characterized by certain automatic responses of the nervous system (for example, elevated heart rate when standing up) not occurring.
For his efforts Sir Roger Bannister was also made the inaugural recipient of the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award in 1955 (he was given the award as the 1954 Sportsman of the Year but it was awarded in January, 1955) and is one of the few non-Americans recognized by the American published magazine as such.
Sir Roger Bannister is the subject of the ESPN movie “Four Minutes” (2005). This movie is a dramatization; its major departures from the factual record being the creation of a fictional character as Bannister’s coach, when this was actually Franz Stampfl, an Austrian, and secondly his meeting his spouse, Moyra Jacobsson, in the early 1950s, when in fact they met in London only a few months before the Miracle Mile itself took place.
The 50th anniversary of Sir Roger’s achievement was marked by a commemorative British 50 pence coin. The reverse of the coin shows the legs of a runner and a stop watch.
Bannister, arguably the most famous record-setter in the mile, is also the man who held the record for the least amount of time, at least since the IAAF started to ratify records. Of the 14 men who have set mile records under 4:00, he is the only one who never won an Olympic medal.
** edit]** Quotes* *“I knew I was very close. I did collapse at the end. If you don’t keep on running, keep your blood circulating…the muscles stop pumping the blood back, and you get dizzy. I did lose my sight for a bit because I was crowded in. Everybody rushed on to the track.” * *“I found longer races boring. I found the mile just perfect.” * *“The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.” * *Roger Bannister on breaking the 4-minute mile (Cameron, 1993: 185): “No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.” *
Finally, see the quote on keeping the blood circulating and the muscles pumping the blood back…if you ever did an Ironman and stopped at an aid station this is exactly why it feels so hard to get going again! I also like his 10x400m in 60 second as part of his lunch hour routine…priceless!