FIRST IN LINE

LADIES FIRST!

The first First Lady was Martha Washington.
The first published American woman writer was Anne Bradstreet with The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America in 1650.
The first female newspaper editor was Ann Franklin, in 1762, of the Newport Mercury in Newport, Rhode Island.
The first American woman ordained a minister by a recognized denomination was Antoinette Brown Blackwell in 1853.
The first woman to successfully climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland was Lucy Walker in 1871.
The first woman to run for president was Victoria Woodhall in 1872.
The first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island was Annie Moore in 1892. She was 15 years old and from County Cork, Ireland.
The first woman to appear on a U.S. postage stamp was Queen Isabella of Spain in 1893.
The first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel was Annie Taylor in 1901. She was 64 years old at the time.
The first woman in the British Empire to run for a national office was Vida Goldstein in 1902. She ran for the Australian Senate when women there obtained the right to vote in all federal elections.
The first woman to swim across the English Channel in each direction was Florence Chadwick in 1951.
The first American woman to win the ladies singles tennis championship at Wimbledon was May Sutton Brandy in 1904.
The first licensed female pilot was Baroness Raymonde de la Roche of France, who learned to fly in 1909, and received ticket No. 36 on March 8, 1910.
The first reigning queen of England was Queen Mary I in 1553.
The first policewoman in the United States was Alice Wells in 1910. She was hired by the Los Angeles Police Department and was allowed to design her own uniform.
The first female combat pilot to bomb an enemy target was Lt. Kendra Williams of the U.S. Navy, who bombed enemy targets over Iraq during Operation Desert Fox in 1998.
The first female film director to have a film take in more than $100 million at the box office was Penny Marshall, with Big, in 1988.
The first lesbian kiss on television was the L.A. Law kiss between Amanda Donohoe and Michelle Green in 1991.
The first black woman in space was Mae Carol Jemison on the Endeavor in 1992.
The first known female serial killer in America was Aileen Wuornos. In 1992 she was charged with killing five middle-age men she met on highways while hitch-hiking. She was later executed.
The first Miss America was 16-year-old Margaret Gor man, in 1921.
The first female chief of a major American Indian tribe was Wilma Mankiller, who was elected principal chief of the Cherokee nation in 1985.
The first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was Aretha Franklin in 1987.
The first female prime minister of Britain was Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
The first child born to American colonists, on what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina, was Virginia Dare in 1587.
The first winner of the Miss World beauty pageant, at the age of 17, was Alice Hyde in 1911.
The first footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater (now Mann’s Chinese Theater) were made by Norma Tal madge in 1927.
The first Oscar winner for Best Actress was Janet Gaynor in 1928.
The first female commercial airline pilot in the United States was Emily Warner on Frontier Airlines in 1973.
The first airline hostess was Ellen Church in 1930. She served passengers flying between San Francisco, California, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, on United Airlines.
The first transatlantic solo flight by a woman was by Amelia Earhart in 1932, who traveled from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Ireland in approximately 15 hours.
The first woman to pilot the Concorde was Barbara Harmer on March 25, 1993.
The first American black female pilot was Bessie Cole-man in 1921.
The first around-the-world solo flight by a woman was by Jerrie Mock in 1964.
The first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound was Jacqueline Cochrane in 1953. She piloted an F-86 Sabre-jet over California at an average speed of 652.337 miles per hour.
The first woman to win an Olympic Gold Medal was Charlotte Cooper in tennis in 1900.
The first canonized American saint was Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1946.
The first professional woman bullfighter was Patricia McCormick, who fought two bulls in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in 1952.
The first monarch to have a televised coronation was Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
The first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace was Queen Victoria in 1837.
The first exposed breasts on television were those of film star Jayne Mansfield, who exhaled at the 1957 Academy Awards and accidentally let it all hang out.
The first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova in 1963.
The first woman to be elected a head of state was Sirimavo Bandaraneike in 1960, who became president of Sri Lanka.
The first Jewish female prime minister and first female prime minister of Israel was Golda Meir in 1964.
The first nude centerfold was Amber Dean Smith who, in 1965, at the age of 19, was crowned “Pet of the Year” by Penthouse magazine.
The first woman to qualify and race at the Indianapo lis 500 was Janet Guthrie in 1977.
The first test-tube baby was Louise Brown from Lan cashire in 1978.
The first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest was Junko Tabei in 1975.
The first woman to set foot on the North Pole was Fran Phillips on April 5, 1971.
007LADY SECOND
The first sex-change operation was performed on George (Christine) Jorgenson in 1952.

FIRST IS THE WORST

The first criminal to be executed in the electric chair was William Kemmler in 1890 in Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York.
The first airplane fatality was Thomas Selfridge, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who was in a group evaluating the Wright plane at Fort Myers, in 1908. He was up seventy-five feet with Orville Wright when the propeller hit a bracing wire and broke, throwing the plane out of control. Selfridge was killed and Wright seriously injured.
The first president to die in office was William Harrison in 1841. At 32 days, his was also the shortest term in office.
The first indicted bank robber in the United States was Edward Smith in 1831, who was sentenced to five years’ hard labor on the rock pile at Sing Sing Prison.
The first woman to be placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, for kidnapping, extortion, and other crimes, was Ruth Eisemann-Schier in 1968.
The first train robbery in the United States was committed on October 6, 1866, by the Reno brothers, who boarded an eastbound train in Indiana wearing masks and toting guns. After clearing one safe, they tossed another out the window and jumped off the train before making an easy getaway.
In 1846, Albert Tirrell became the first person to successfully use sleepwalking as a defense for murder and arson in the United States.

READY FOR TAKEOFF

The first humans to fly were Marquis d’Arlandes and Pi latre de Rozier, who were airborne in a hot-air balloon for 20 minutes in Paris on November 21, 1783.
The first successful heavier-than-air machine flight was on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when Orville Wright crawled to his prone position between the wings of the biplane he and his brother Wilbur had built. The 12-horsepower aircraft covered 120 feet in 12 seconds. Later that day, in one of four flights, Wilbur stayed up 59 seconds and covered 852 feet.
The first around-the-world commercial flight was made by Pan American airlines in January 1942.
The first person to break the sound barrier by flying faster than the speed of sound was Chuck Yeager, who flew a Bell X-1 rocket at 670 miles per hour in level flight on October 14, 1947.
The first aerial combat was in August 1914, when Allied and German pilots and observers started shooting at each other with pistols and rifles—with negligible results.
The first balloonist to fly solo around the world was Steve Fossett, who landed in Australia on July 4, 2002.
The first man to fly solo across the Atlantic was Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
008INITIAL DESCENT
The first parachute jump, in 1797, was made by André-Jacques Garnerin, who was dropped from about 3,200 feet over a Paris park, in a 23-foot-diameter parachute made of white canvas with a basket attached.
 
The first known person to survive the jump off Niagara Falls was Sam Patch in 1829.

WE HAVE IGNITION

The first land speed record in car racing was set in 1903 by Alexander Winton, at Daytona Beach. His speed was 68.18 miles per hour.
The first winner of the Grand Prix held at Le Mans, France, was Romanian driver Ferenc Szisz in 1906, who drove a Renault.
The first person to break the sound barrier in a car, at Lake Bonneville, Utah, was Craig Breedlove, with a speed of over 760 miles an hour, in 1998.

CURTAIN UP!

The first actor to star in a talking motion picture was Al Jolson in 1927 in The Jazz Singer.
The first television service, airing three hours a day, was started by the BBC in 1936.
The first issue of TV Guide in April 1953 had Lucille Ball and her son Desi Arnaz Jr. on the cover.
The first time the word “hell” was used on television was in 1967 on Star Trek, when Captain Kirk said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The first time the word “bastard” was used on television was when Meg called her son Ben a “bastard” on the soap opera Love of Life in 1974.
The first rape scene on television was in the controversial TV movie Born Innocent, starring Linda Blair, on NBC on September 10, 1974.
The first actor to portray an openly gay main character in a TV show was Billy Crystal, who played Jodie Dallas on ABC’s Soap, which aired from 1977 to 1981.
009TURN THE RADIO UP
The big band that started the swing era on radio was Benny Goodman’s, on NBC’s Let’s Dance in 1934.
The first gold record ever awarded to a recording artist was to Glenn Miller in 1941.

TOP OF THE LEADERBOARD

The first winner of the Tour de France was Maurice Garin in 1903.
The first person to cross the Antarctic Circle was James Cook in 1773.
The first man to reach the South Pole, beating an expedition led by Robert F. Scott, was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1911.
The first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope was Jean François “Blondin” Gravelet in 1859.
The first flying trapeze circus act in the world, performed at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris, without safety nets, was by Jules Leotard in 1859.
The first recognized boxing champion was Tim Hyer in 1841.
The first known person to swim across the English Channel was Matthew Webb in 1875. (He drowned in 1883 after unsuccessfully trying to swim across the whirlpools and rapids beneath Niagara Falls.)
The first world chess champion was Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886.
The first winner of the U.S. Masters Golf Tournament, at Augusta National in Georgia, was Horton Smith in 1934.
The first recorded climb of Mount Everest was by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.
The first recorded person to run a mile race in under four minutes was Sir Roger Bannister on May 6, 1954. He broke the four-minute barrier at Imey Road, Oxford, in a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
The first figure skater to land a quadruple jump in competition was Kurt Browning in 1988.
The first athlete in a team sport to come out during his athletic career was British soccer player Justin Fashanu in 1988.
The first athlete to win seven Olympic gold medals was American swimmer Mark Spitz in 1972.

FIRST PLACE IN SPACE

The first living creature to orbit Earth was Laika the dog in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik 2.
The first human in space, and the first to orbit Earth, was Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin in 1961.
The first black man in space was Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. in 1983.
The first human to walk in space was Alexei Ark hovich Leonov in 1965.

LEADING LEADERS

The first and the only unanimously elected U.S. president was George Washington in 1789.
The first tsar of Russia was Ivan IV (known as Ivan the Terrible) in 1547.
The first prime minister of Australia was Edmund Bar-ton, in 1900.
The first and only U.S. president to resign from office was Richard Milhaus Nixon in 1974.
The first Pole to become pope was John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, in 1978.

PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSES

The first person to have his diabetes successfully treated was a 14-year-old Canadian boy named Leonard Thompson, who was injected with the new discovery called insulin, at Toronto General Hospital in 1922.
The first quintuplets to survive infancy were Marie, Cecile, Yvonne, Emilie, and Annette Dionne, who were born near Callender, Ontario, to Oliva and Elzire Dionne in 1934.
The first cloned mammal was Dolly the lamb, in 1996.
The first human heart transplant was performed in 1967 by South African heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard.
The first recipient of a permanent patented artificial heart was Barney Clark on December 2, 1982. He lived until March 23, 1983.

INAUGURAL INSTANCES

The first sheets of toilet paper, each measuring two by three feet, and for use by the emperor, were introduced in China in 1391. The first toilet paper rolls were marketed by the Scott Paper Company in Philadelphia in 1879.
The first magician to perform the trick of sawing a woman in half was Count de Grisley, in 1799.
The first grapefruit trees in Florida, around Tampa Bay, were planted by Frenchman Count Odette Phillipe in 1823. Today, Florida produces more grapefruit than the rest of the world combined.
The first rubber band was made and patented in 1845.
The first skyscraper, the 10-story Wainwright Building in St. Louis, was designed by Louis Henry Sullivan in 1891.
The first bottled Coca-Cola appeared in 1899 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The first Scrabble game was played in 1931.
The first telephone call made around the world was in 1935.
The first male to appear on the cover of Playboy magazine was Peter Sellers in 1964.
The first artist on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine was John Lennon on November 9, 1967.
The first People magazine cover was of Mia Farrow in 1974.
The first item ever sold on eBay was a broken laser printer, sold for $14 by the site’s creator.
The world’s first active MySpace account belongs to a user named “ducky,” who has almost 200,000 friends.
The world’s first perfect Pac-Man game was played on July 3, 1999, by Billy Mitchell. It took him six hours to score the maximum possible 3,333,360 points by eating every fruit, Power Pellet, blue ghost, and dot for 256 boards without losing a single life. Interestingly, although the game technically has no end, the 256th and final level contains a bug that has thus far made the level impossible to finish.
The first condensed soup was made in New Jersey in 1897.
The first vending machines in the United States dispensed chewing gum and were installed in New York City train platforms in 1888.