List of firsts

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This is a list of the first man/woman/object etc., to do something or the first occurrence of an event.

[edit] Government

[edit] Laws and Constitution

First law written in cuneiform - by Urukagina 2350 BC
First written Constitution-- the oldest modern, national, codified constitution in the world, Summeria, ca 2300 BC
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, 1791

[edit] Leaders

[edit] from Antiquity to the 17th Century

First Emperor of Ancient China: Qin Shi Huang (ca. 221 BC)
First Emperor of Ancient Rome: Augustus (ca. 27 BC)

First Bishop of Rome to condemn heresy: Anicetus, by forbidding Montanism, also actively opposed the Gnostics and Marcionism
First Bishop of Rome to be called "Pope": Siricius
First antipope: Hippolytus (d. 235)
First pope to adopt a regnal name: Pope John II (b. "Mercurius"; d. 535)
First Christian Monarch of Sweden: Olof Skötkonung (995)

[edit] 18th Century onwards

First de facto Prime Minister of Great Britain: Robert Walpole (1721)
First official Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: William Pitt the Younger (first term, 1783-1801)
First President of Chile: Manuel Blanco Encalada. (1826)
First Prime Minister of Canada: Sir John A. Macdonald (elected 1867)
First Prime Minister of Sweden: Louis De Geer (1876)
First Prime Minister of Australia: Edmund Barton 1901
First woman elected to the British House of Commons: Constance Georgine, Countess Markiewicz, December 1918 General Election (did not take her seat)[1]
First woman to take a seat in the House of Commons: Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, by-election, 28 November 1919[2]
World's first female Acting President:

Unofficial: Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, United States (1919)
Official: Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa, Mongolia (1953)

World's first non-royal female head of state: Chairman Khertek Anchimaa-Toka, Tuvinian People's Republic (1940)
World's first female Prime Minister: Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka (1960)
World's first woman with the title of President: Isabel Perón
First female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: Margaret Thatcher (1979)
First democratically elected female head of state: Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, President of Iceland (1980)
First President of Slovenia: Milan Kučan. (1990)
First black President of South Africa: Nelson Mandela. (1994)

First female head of state elected in Africa: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as President of Liberia (16 January, 2006)
First female President of Chile: Michelle Bachelet (2006)
First female President of India: Smt. Pratibha Patil elected July 25 2007

[edit] in Canada

First Prime Minister to die in office: Sir John A. Macdonald, 3rd Canadian Ministry (d. 6 June, 1891
First Prime Minister born in Canada: Sir John Abbott (b. St-Andre-Est, Lower Canada, 12 March 1821; elected 1891)
First French-Canadian Prime Minister: Sir Wilfrid Laurier (elected 1896)
First Prime Minister born in the Dominion of Canada (after Confederation): Arthur Meighen (b. Anderson, Ontario, 16 June, 1874)
First Canadian-born Governor General of Canada: Vincent Massey (appointed 1952)
First French-Canadian Governor General: Georges Vanier (appointed 1959)
First female Governor General: Jeanne Sauvé (appointed 1984)
First female Prime Minister: Kim Campbell (appointed 1993)
First visible minority: Adrienne Clarkson (appointed 1999)
First Prime Minister born a Canadian citizen: Kim Campbell (b. 10 March, 1947)

[edit] Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada

First female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada: Beverley McLachlin (appointed 2000)
First female Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada: Bertha Wilson (appointed 1982)

[edit] in the United States of America

[edit] Presidents

First President of the United States: George Washington (1789)
First US President to reside in the White House: John Adams (1797)
First President who was not born a British subject: Martin Van Buren (b. Kinderhook, New York, 5 December, 1782)
First President to serve without a Vice President: James Madison (1812-13)
First President to die in office: William Henry Harrison (1841)
First President to be photographed: William Henry Harrison (daguerrotype, 1841)
First President assassinated: Abraham Lincoln (1865)
First President to be impeached: Andrew Johnson (1868)
First President elected to a second non-consecutive term: Grover Cleveland (First term 1885–1889, second term 1893–1897)
First Presidents to have their voice recorded: Benjamin Harrison (1889), Grover Cleveland (second term) (1892)
First President to make a radio broadcast Woodrow Wilson (1919) (to US troops)
First Presidential inauguration to be broadcast on the radio Warren G. Harding (1921)
First President elected to a third (or fourth) term: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940)
First President to appear on television Harry S. Truman (1947)
First President to resign from that office: Richard Nixon (1974)
First President not elected as either President or Vice President: Gerald Ford, appointed Vice President (1973) under the terms of the 25th Amendment, succeeded to the Presidency on the resignation of Richard Nixon (1974)
First female Presidential candidate: Victoria Woodhull (1872)

[edit] Vice-Presidents

First Vice President of the United States: John Adams (1789)
First Vice President to be subsequently elected President: John Adams (1797)
First Vice President to die in office: George Clinton (d. 1812)
First Vice President to resign from office: John C. Calhoun (28 December 1832)
First Vice President to assume the office of president upon the death of his predecessor: John Tyler (1841)
First Vice President sworn in outside the United States: William R. King, (Havana, Cuba, 1853)

[edit] Other

First Chief Justice of the United States: John Jay (1789)
First minority Justice of the United States Supreme Court: Thurgood Marshall (1965)
First female Justice of the United States Supreme Court: Sandra Day O'Connor (1982)
First woman elected to the House of Representatives: Jeannette Rankin (1916)
First female senator: Rebecca Felton (appointed 21 November, 1922)
First female elected to the Senate: Hattie Wyatt Caraway (1932)
First female named to a presidential cabinet: Frances Perkins (Secretary of Labor, 1933)
First female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives: Nancy Pelosi (elected 3 January, 2007)

[edit] Crime and Punishment

First victim of the punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering: Dafydd ap Gruffydd. October 3, 1283
First person to be executed by the guillotine: Nicolas J. Pelletier, highwayman. April 25, 1792
First instance of a murder captured live on television : Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald. November 24, 1963. (See pic).
First commercial airliner to be hijacked : Miss Macao, owned by Cathay Pacific, on a flight from Macau to Hong Kong, 16 July, 1948

[edit] Travel and Exploration

First people to reach the South Pole: Roald Amundsen and his party - Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting. December 14, 1911
First (and only, as of 2005) people to reach the deepest point on the surface of the earth, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean: Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh on the Bathyscaphe Trieste. January 23, 1960
First people to scale K2, the world's second-highest peak: Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni of the party led by Ardito Desio and Mario Puchoz. July 29, 1954
First person to die in a crash of a powered airplane: Thomas Selfridge. September 17, 1908
First non-stop trans-Atlantic flight: Alcock and Brown — St. John's, Newfoundland to a bog near Clifden, Ireland, 14-15 June, 1919
First mother and son to row any ocean: Janice Meek and Daniel Byles, (1998)
First Shipwreck, (see oldest shipwreck)

[edit] Geographic North Pole

First (disputed) expedition to the geographic North Pole: Robert Edwin Peary and his employee Matthew Henson and four Inuit men Ootah, Seegloo, Egingway, and Ooqueah. April 9, 1909
First people to sight it: Roald Amundsen and his sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth from an aircraft piloted by Umberto Nobile, between 11 May and 13 May, 1926
First people to reach it: Lt. Col. Joseph O. Fletcher and Lt. William P. Benedict landed their plane. May 3, 1952
First naval vessel to reach it: the USS Nautilus (SSN-571). August 3, 1958
First to reach the North Pole by surface travel: team led by Sir Wally Herbert. 1968-69
First (confirmed) surface conquest: Ralph Plaisted. April 19, 1968
First confirmed expedition to reach the North Pole without resupply: Will Steger International Polar Expedition. May 1, 1986. Team members were : Paul Schurke, Brent Boddy, Richard Weber, Geoff Carroll, Ann Bancroft and a team of 21 dogs. Brent Boddy & Richard Weber became the first Canadians to reach the North Pole on foot while Ann Bancroft became the first woman to trek to the Pole.
First surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean on skis: Polar Bridge expedition, 1988, the Soviet-Canadian transpolar ski expedition that crossed 1800 kilometres of Arctic Ocean from Northern Siberia to Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve in Canada, via the North Pole. First surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean on skis. Richard Weber (Canadian team leader) became the first person to reach the North Pole from both sides of the Arctic Ocean.
First hot air balloon flight launched from the North Pole: Global Concern Expedition lead by Richard Weber. 1989
First attempt to journey to the North Pole and return using only human resources: 1992 Weber Malakhov Expedition. Richard Weber and Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov departed from Ward Hunt on March 13. Eighty-five days later, on June 14, they reached 89 degrees 39. With only 39 kilometers short of the Pole, they had to make the decision to turn back if they wanted to have any hope of returning to Ward Hunt. On June 21, due to the lack of ice, they were picked up by an airplane and brought back to safety.
First commercial North Pole Expedition: Weber Malakhov North Pole Dash.1993 Richard Weber and Dr. Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov pioneered the first commercial North Pole expedition. Today numerous companies take more than 100 people annually to the Pole.
First confirmed journey to the North Pole and return using only human resources: 1995 Weber Malakhov Expedition. Richard Weber and Dr. Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov became the first to reach the North Pole and return to their starting point on land (Ward Hunt, Canada), with no outside help, no dogs, air planes, or re-supplies. They departed Ward Hunt on February 14 and reached the Pole eighty one days later, on May 12. On June 15, they were back at Ward Hunt establishing a record of 108 days for the longest unsupported polar journey. They are the only people to have reached the Pole four times.
First time that an all women group has reached the pole from a Russian based departure: Women Quest 2001 guided by Josée Auclair. April 2001.
First persons to reach the North Pole during the Arctic winter: Borge Ousland and Mike Horn. March 23, 2006
First reigning monarch to reach it: Albert II, Prince of Monaco. Easter Sunday, 16 April, 2006
First expedition to reach the North Pole on snowshoes exclusively : April 26, 2006 North Pole Classic. Richard Weber guided Conrad Dickinson to the North Pole with no re-supplies. This was Richard Weber’s fifth full North Pole expedition. He has trekked to the North Pole more than anyone in history.
On 21st February 2007 HRH Prince Edward announced the first British Army Expedition the Geographic North Pole, to be led by Captain Andrew Cooney (the youngest person to walk to the South Pole) www.northpole08.com.
First to dive to geographic North Pole sea bottom: Arktika 2007 expedition on August 2, 2007, by two MIR submarines. Crew members were: Arthur Chilingarov, Anatoly Sagalevich and Vladimir Gruzdev on MIR-1; Yevgeny Chernyaev, Mike McDowell and Frederik Paulsen on MIR-2.
First American Moring News news show to reach the North Pole: Today show reached by Matt Lauer

[edit] Magnetic North Pole

First woman to reach the magnetic North Pole solo: Helen Thayer (1988)
First mother and son to reach any Pole by foot: Janice Meek and Daniel Byles, (2007)
First expedition to reach the Magnetic North Pole by automobile: Jeremy Clarkson and James May, (2007) as shown on a special episode of BBC's Top Gear where the two presenters reached the Pole in a specially modified Toyota Hilux pickup truck. The two were accompanied by seven others, including the camera and sound crew, two Icelandic mechanics, and a soldier of unstated nationality in two other specially modified vehicles.

[edit] Mount Everest

First recorded deaths on Mount Everest: 7 Sherpas die in avalanche in 1922
First successful summit (via the South-East Ridge Route) Tenzing Norgay & Sir Edmund Hillary 29 May 1953
First successful summit via the North Ridge by a Chinese team on 25 May 1960
First ascent of the West Ridge on 22 May 1963 Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein. Also the first traverse of the South East Ridge
First person to summit Everest twice: Nawang Gombu Sherpa (20 May 1965)
First woman to summit is Junko Tabei of Japan (16 May 1975) via the South-East Ridge
First woman to summit from the North (Tibetan) side is a Tibetan woman named Phantog
First summit from the South West face on 24 September 1975 are Dougal Haston and Doug Scott
First ascent without bottled oxygen is by Peter Habeler (Austria) and Reinhold Messner (Italy) (8 May 1978)
First woman to die on Everest: Hannelore Schmatz, after becoming the 4th woman to summit Everest
First Winter ascent is by Krzysztof Wielicki of Poland (17 February 1980)
First person to summit Everest solo Reinhold Messner (20 August 1980)
First woman to climb without oxygen was Lydia Bradey of New Zealand (14 November 1988)
First true ski descent by Davo Karničar of Slovenia (7 October 2000)
First snowboard descent by Marco Siffredi
First blind person to Summit Everest is Erik Weihenmayer (2000)
First North Face ski descent by Tormod Granheim (2006)
First sumit after a severe case of HAPE by Brian Smith (2007)

[edit] Beyond the Earth

See also: Spaceflight records

First artificial satellite launched into orbit: Sputnik 1 (1957)
First animal in space: fruit flies, 1946
First animal to orbit Earth: Laika (1957)
First man in space: Yuri Gagarin (1961)
First woman in space: Valentina Tereshkova (1963)
First civilian in space: Valentina Tereshkova (1963)
First spacewalk: Aleksei Leonov (1965)
First human to walk on the Moon: Neil Armstrong (see Apollo 11) (1969)
First woman to perform a space walk: Svetlana Savitskaya (1984)
First manned private spaceflight: SpaceShipOne piloted by Mike Melvill June 21, 2004
First spacecraft to orbit Saturn: Cassini-Huygens July 1, 2004
First African-American woman in space: Mae C. Jemison

[edit] Science, Discoveries, Inventions, and Innovations

First woman officially recognized for a scientific position: Caroline Herschel, as astronomer Sir William Herschel's assistant, 1787
First comet discovered by a woman: Discovered by Caroline Herschel, August 1, 1786
First permanent photograph: View from the Window at Le Gras, taken by Nicéphore Niépce, June or July, 1826 or 1827.
First permanent color photograph: Tartan Ribbon, taken by James Clerk Maxwell, 1861.
First successful creation of soda water: by Joseph Priestley, 1796
First skyscraper - Woolworth Building, New York City, 57 floors high (792 feet or 241 meters), opened on April 24, 1913.

[edit] Natural History

First homo sapiens : the Omo Remains include Omo I, the earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens (idaltu), dated to around 190,000 years ago.[3] This is considerably older than the 160,000-year-old Herto remains, which had been thought to be the earliest humans, and suggests that, if humans did originate in Africa as is currently thought, they did not expand from there for much longer than previously thought.
First European child born in the New World: Snorri Þorfinnsson
First observed transit of a planet across the sun, Mercury, by Pierre Gassendi in 1631.
First international scientific collaboration: Observation of the transit of Venus 1761 and 1769

First confirmation of an active volcanic eruption occurring on a seamount: by scientists at the University of Hawai‘i on Lo‘ihi in 1996

[edit] Life Sciences

First vaccination: smallpox, Edward Jenner, 1796
First whole-body scanner and x-ray machine: Dayton Miller (Case School of Applied Science), Cleveland, Ohio, 1896
First blood transfusion: conducted by Dr. George Crile, Cleveland, Ohio (1905)
First "test-tube baby": Louise Brown, born July 25, 1978 in England.
First official recognition of AIDS: Centers for Disease Control issued a report describing five cases in Los Angeles. June 5, 1981
First person to be convicted by the process of DNA fingerprinting: Colin Pitchfork. 1988
First person to be exonerated by the process of DNA fingerprinting: Richard Buckland. 1988
First face transplant: Isabelle Dinoire, November 5, 2005.

[edit] Heart

First heart defibrillation: conducted by Dr. Claude Beck, Cleveland, Ohio (1947)
First artificial pacemaker implant into a human: By a Swedish team using a pacemaker designed by Rune Elmqvist working under the direction of Åke Senning, 1958. The patient was Arne Larsson.
First coronary artery bypass surgery: conducted by Dr. Rene Favaloro, Cleveland, Ohio (1967)
First heart transplant: First attempted by James Hardy, but the lack of a human donor forced him to transplant a chimpanzee heart instead, which failed shortly after. The first successful transplant was performed by Christiaan Barnard on December 3, 1967.
First artificial pacemaker implant into an infant: Into Jason A. Haines when he was 16 hours old, July 26, 1974.

[edit] Commodities

First bottled food: in 1809 the French confectioner Nicolas François Appert developed a method of vacuum-sealing food inside glass jars
First canned food: issued by the French Army
First can-opener: invented 30 years after the first canned food

[edit] Traffic Lights

Main articles: Traffic light#History and Traffic Lights

First traffic lights installed (gas lamp) : outside Houses of Parliament, London. December 10, 1868
First traffic lights installed (electric) : by Salt Lake City policeman Lester Wire. 1912
First traffic signal system installed : by the American Traffic Signal Company on the corner of 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. August 5, 1914
First three-color traffic lights installed : in New York and Detroit. 1920
First automatic traffic lights installed : in Wolverhampton, England. 1927

[edit] Nuclear weapons

First nuclear weapon detonation: Atom bomb named "The gadget" during the "Trinity test" near Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 16, 1945
First nuclear weapon detonation used in war: Atom bomb named "Little Boy" during World War II on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945

[edit] Information and Communications Technology

Communication satellite firsts: Main article: List of communications satellite firsts
First telecommunications system: Claude Chappe's semaphore lines. Between Paris and Lille in 1792
First telephone message: Alexander Graham Bell in 1876: "Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you." [4]
First official adhesive postage stamp: The Penny Black, 1 May, 1840
First trans-Atlantic wireless signal: the letter "S" in Morse code, by Guglielmo Marconi, sent from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St. John's, Newfoundland, 12 December, 1901

[edit] Computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web

First case of an algorithm written for a computer: Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine written in 1842
First programmer: Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
First programmable digital computer: Z3, 1941
First programmable electronic computer: Colossus, 1943
First all electronic computer system that worked and continued to work for a decade ENIAC Unveiled 1946
First e-mail: started around 1965
First e-mail spam: sent using CTSS MAIL about 1971, at a time of campus unrest and anti-war rallies in the USA
First reigning monarch to e-mail: sent by Queen Elizabeth II from a British army base in 1976
First e-commerce business Boston Computer Exchange uploads database of computers for sale to Delphi online service March 4, 1983
First book about the web: Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog (1992) by Ed Krol, had a whole chapter devoted to the web
First web portal to do advertising: Global Network Navigator founded by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty, 1993
First advertisement on the internet: by Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe on the Global Network Navigator website, 1993
First usage of a webcam: Trojan room coffee pot, 1991
First photographic image on the Web: Les Horribles Cernettes, 1992
First electronic payment over the Internet: PaySafe, 1992
First instant messaging service: ICQ released in November, 1996

[edit] Sports

First person to drive an automobile across the US in winter and from New York City to Paris France winning The Great Auto Race 22,000 mile course in 169 days/13,341 miles driven : George Schuster, (1908)
First human to run a mile under 4 minutes: Roger Bannister, (1954)
First person to swim the English Channel: Matthew Webb, (1875)
First woman to swim the English Channel: Gertrude Ederle, (1926)
First person to complete a long distance swim in all 5 oceans of the world : Lewis Gordon Pugh, (2005/2006)
First free diver to descend 100 metres (330 feet) in water : Jacques Mayol, November 23, 1976
First Olympian disqualified for drug use: Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall at the 1968 Summer Olympics
First bungee jump: by four members of the Dangerous Sports Club led by David Kirke, from the 250ft Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. 1 April, 1979
First woman to bicycle around the world: Annie Londonderry, (1895)
First auto race in the United States: Held on the grounds of Belcourt Castle, Newport, Rhode Island, 1899

[edit] Soccer (Football)

First soccer player to be knighted: Sir Stanley Matthews, (1965)
First soccer player to take a penalty shootout: George Best, in the semi-finals of the Watney Cup, England (1970)
First soccer player to miss a penalty shootout: Dennis Law, in the semi-finals of the Watney Cup, England (1970)
First major soccer tournament to be settled by a penalty shootout - UEFA European Football Championship 1976, Czechoslovakia vs. West Germany (a penalty score of 5-3 respectively)
First soccer World Cup match to be decided by a penalty shootout: the 1982 semi-finals between West Germany and France (a penalty score of 5-4 respectively)
First soccer World Cup final match to be decided by a penalty shootout: 1994 final between Brazil and Italy, at Pasadena, California (a penalty score of 3-2 respectively).

[edit] Culture

First man or woman in mythology: see First man or woman
First person to wear a bikini: Micheline Bernardini. July 5 1946
First officially recorded instance of wearing of high heels: Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France, on her wedding. October 28, 1533

[edit] Film

First black-and-white film to be colorized: Topper in 1985 (the original film was released in 1937)
First lesbian-themed film: Mädchen in Uniform directed by Leontine Sagan and scriptwritten by Christa Winsloe. Germany, 1931
First woman to appear nude in a motion picture: Audrey Munson as a sculptor's model in Inspiration, 1915
First nude scene in German filmmaking: Performed by Hildegard Knef for the character of Marina in Die Sünderin (The Sinner), 1950
First fictional feature film shot with a mobile phone to premiere at major film festivals: Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan, 2007

[edit] Literature

First novel in English: Several works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English. See First novel in English.
First novel about invasion: The Battle of Dorking (1871), by George Tomkyns Chesney.
First novel about spies: The Riddle of the Sands (1903), by Erskine Childers or The Spy, by James Fennimore Cooper (1821) (depends on your source and interpretation).
First novel whose manuscript was type written: Life on the Mississippi (published 1883) by Mark Twain.
First American novel: The Power of Sympathy, by William Hill Brown.
First realistic novel and first novel in Spanish: Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

[edit] See also

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness.

Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.nl:Lijst van eersten

sl:Seznam prvih fi:Luettelo ensimmäisistä tl:Listahan ng mga unang bagay

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