To hear Hillary Clinton tell it, she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest â even though she was already 6 years old when he made his famous ascent. On a visit to war-torn Bosnia in 1996, she claimed she and her entourage landed under sniper fire and had to run âwith our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our baseâ â although videos of her arrival show her waltzing serenely across the tarmac, waving to the crowd.