The first central power plant Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan, built by Thomas Edison began generating electricity on September 4, 1882. Pearl Street had one generator and it produced power for 800 electric light bulbs. Within 14 months, Pearl Street Station had 508 subscribers and 12,732 bulbs.
Since the first power plant (thomas edison's power plant) lit up 800 light bulbs in 1882, the electric utility industry has grown to generate over 2.5 million gigawatt-hours annually, the equivalent of lighting 4.8 billion 60-watt light bulbs for a year
The first use of gas energy in the United States occurred in 1816, when gaslights illuminated the streets of Baltimore, Maryland.
Popular culture also holds the year 2000 as the first year of the twenty first century and the third millennium. In the Gregorian Calendar, however, this distinction falls to the year 2001. This is because the first century began with the year 1 (there was no year zero)
In 1830 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company built the first railroad station in Baltimore.
The first ambulance service was established in Cincinnati in 1865.
100 is the sum of the first nine prime numbers, as well as the sum of two prime numbers (47 + 53), and the sum of the cubes of the first four integers (100 = 1^3 + 2^3 + 3^3 + 4^3). Also, 2^6 + 6^2 = 100
In 1865 the first speed limit was introduced in Britain - 2 mph in town and 4 mph in the country.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
Internet Retailer magazine makes a list of the Top 50 Retailing Websites. We're checking them out one by one, the first to jump out is GiftBaskets.com Inc
You have to hand it to them, no matter if it's a grandkid's birthday or a valentine day surprise, gift baskets rule.
Now, till April 30, Gift Baskets.com is discounting shipping on overnight Gift Basket Emergency delivery!
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first of six home runs.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was the first cartoon built around a line of toys.
the first movie theaters were called nickelodeons
There are 3 classifications of burns. a) First degree burn only involves the outer layer of skin. b) Second degree burn involves several layers of the skin tha become blistered. c) Third degree burn is all layers of the skin,underlying tissue and organs. Nerves are damaged and sometimes destoyed.
A mild burn, run under cold tap water for 10 minutes, (do not use ice). A first degree burn, leave alone 24 hours, do not cover and avoid any product application. A second degree burn, apply antibiotic ointment and cover with sterile dressing. If blisters break open clean with tap water. A third degree burn, needs immediate medical attention. Have person lie down, and cover burn with clean sheet, until medical professional arrives.
Initial public offering (IPO) — The first time a company sells stock to the public. An IPO is a type of a primary offering, which occurs whenever a company sells new stock, and differs from a secondary offering, which is the public sale of previously issued securities, usually held by insiders. Some people say IPO stands for "Immediate Profit Opportunities." More cynicIt's Probably Overpriced."
The first test-tube baby was born in Britain in 1978
In 1862, to support the Civil War, Congress enacted the nation's first income tax law. Congress eliminated the income tax in 1872 and it had a short-lived revival in 1894 and 1895.
In 1913 the income tax was brought back and became a permanent part of American life. It provided a seemingly unlimited source of funds to finance ever-growing government, and it gave the government an excuse to pry into every aspect of your life.
Yellowstone became the first US national park in 1872, and it is widely considered the first national park in the world.
China's Terracotta Army is thousands of life-size clay soldiers buried with the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Farmers digging a well discovered it by accident in 1974.
In August 2023, India's Chandrayaan-3 mission became the first spacecraft to land near the Moon's south pole, making India the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon.
Indian mathematicians were the first to treat zero as a number in its own right. In 628 CE, the mathematician Brahmagupta wrote down rules for calculating with it.
Japan's Shinkansen "bullet train" opened in 1964, just before the Tokyo Olympics. It was the world's first high-speed rail line.
Hiroshima, Japan, became the first city hit by an atomic bomb, on August 6, 1945. Nagasaki was hit three days later.
The London Underground opened in 1863 and was the world's first underground railway. Its first trains were pulled by steam engines.
Stonehenge in England was first built around 3000 BCE, which means its earliest stages are roughly 5,000 years old.
The Football Association was founded in London in 1863 and wrote the first official set of rules for modern soccer.
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. It was originally meant to be temporary, and many Parisian artists hated it at first.
The first Tour de France bike race was held in 1903. A newspaper created it to boost its sales.
German engineer Karl Benz patented his gas-powered Motorwagen in 1886, and it is widely considered the first practical automobile.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957. The launch kicked off the Space Race with the US.
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961, orbiting Earth once in about 108 minutes.
Banff, in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, became Canada's first national park in 1885.
Corn (maize) was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in southern Mexico from a wild grass called teosinte.
The American Kennel Club officially recognized the French Bulldog in 1898, so the breed has been part of AKC history for more than a century.
When the AKC created the Obedience Champion title in 1977, the first three dogs to earn it were all Golden Retrievers, which proves they're not just pretty faces.
The German Shepherd Dog was created by German cavalry officer Captain Max von Stephanitz. In 1899 he registered a dog named Horand von Grafrath as the first official German Shepherd.
The first guide dog in the US was a female German Shepherd named Buddy. She was trained for Morris Frank, who co-founded The Seeing Eye in 1929, the first guide dog school in America.
German Shepherd puppies are born with floppy ears, which usually stand up on their own sometime between about 5 and 8 months old, often going through a hilarious one-up, one-down phase first.
The first official Olympic mascot was Waldi, a colorful striped Dachshund created for the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. The marathon route was even designed in the shape of a Dachshund.
The Labradoodle was first bred in 1989 by Wally Conron at Royal Guide Dogs Australia, to create a low-shedding guide dog. Conron later said he regretted it because of the unregulated "designer dog" craze that followed.
In the early 1900s, Rottweilers were among the first breeds used as police dogs in Germany, thanks to their strength, intelligence, and protective instincts.
Yale University's Bulldog mascot, Handsome Dan, became the first live college mascot in the US in 1889, and Yale still keeps a live Bulldog in the role today.
A brown tabby Maine Coon named Cosey won the first major cat show in the US, held at Madison Square Garden in 1895.
The first Devon Rex, Kirlee, is believed to have been fathered by a curly-coated feral tomcat living near an abandoned tin mine in Devon, England.
The first cat genome ever sequenced, published in 2007, came from an Abyssinian named Cinnamon, which made the breed an important part of feline genetics research.
Harrison Weir, known as the "father of the cat fancy," organized the first modern cat show at London's Crystal Palace in 1871, and British Shorthairs were among the cats he championed.
Siberian cats were first imported to the US in 1990, shortly after the Cold War ended and travel and trade with Russia became easier.
The American Shorthair was among the first breeds recognized by the Cat Fanciers' Association when it was founded in 1906.
The Russian Blue was shown at London's Crystal Palace cat show in 1875, one of the earliest cat shows ever held.
The International Cat Association (TICA) first recognized the Bengal in 1986.
The first known Siamese cat in the US was a gift to First Lady Lucy Hayes in 1878 from the US consul in Bangkok. The cat was named Siam.
Siamese cats were shown at the famous 1871 Crystal Palace cat show in London, and some attendees found their unusual look strange at first.
The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was declared functionally extinct after a 2006 survey failed to find any. It was the first dolphin species thought to be wiped out mainly by human activity.
A 2021 genetic study found that modern domestic horses trace back to the steppes of southern Russia about 4,200 years ago and then spread rapidly across Asia and Europe.
Horses first evolved in North America but died out there around 10,000 years ago, then returned when Spanish explorers brought them back in the 1500s.
OR-7 was a gray wolf from Oregon that traveled more than 1,000 miles and became the first wild wolf known in California since 1924 when he crossed the state line in 2011.
Wolf pups are born deaf and blind, and they depend completely on their mother and the rest of the pack for their first few weeks.
A rhesus monkey named Albert II became the first primate in space in 1949, when a US V-2 rocket carried him past the edge of space.
A chimpanzee named Ham became the first great ape in space in 1961, helping NASA prove that humans could perform tasks during spaceflight.
A chimpanzee named Washoe learned around 350 signs of American Sign Language, making her one of the first non-human animals taught to communicate with human signs.
Humans first landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down while Michael Collins orbited above in the command module.
An estimated 600 million people around the world watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing on TV, one of the largest audiences in history at the time.
Johannes Gutenberg developed a movable-type printing press in Mainz, Germany, around 1440, which made it possible to mass-produce books for the first time in Europe.
Gutenberg wasn't the first to invent movable type. Bi Sheng in China created ceramic movable type around 1040, about 400 years earlier.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830, was the first intercity railway to run passenger trains entirely by steam.
Britain's Factory Act of 1833 was one of the first laws to limit child labor, banning children under nine from working in textile mills.
The 1851 census showed that, for the first time, more people in Britain lived in towns and cities than in the countryside, a direct result of industrialization.
The Wright brothers made the first controlled, powered airplane flight on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville flew 120 feet in 12 seconds.
The Wright brothers flipped a coin to decide who would try first. Wilbur won, but his attempt on December 14, 1903, failed, so Orville made the historic first flight three days later.
Because of a feud with the Smithsonian over who deserved credit for the first airplane, Orville Wright sent the Wright Flyer to the Science Museum in London. It didn't return to the US until 1948.
In 1941, police officer Albert Alexander became the first patient treated with penicillin. He improved dramatically, but he died after the small supply ran out, even though doctors had been recovering penicillin from his urine to reuse it.
In 1942, Anne Miller became the first American civilian saved by penicillin when it cured her of a life-threatening infection.
On the night of November 9, 1989, East German border guard officer Harald Jäger, facing huge crowds at the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint, decided to open the gates without official orders.
In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first Black student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, escorted by federal marshals.
In 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to give women the right to vote in national elections.
Wyoming became the first US territory to give women the right to vote, in 1869, more than 50 years before the 19th Amendment.
The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York was the first women's rights convention in the US, and it launched the American women's suffrage movement.
Beginning in 1917, suffragists called the Silent Sentinels picketed outside the White House for women's right to vote, the first group to protest there continuously.
The women's suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 and wasn't ratified as the 19th Amendment until 1920, 42 years later.
Women in Saudi Arabia voted and ran for office for the first time in 2015, in local municipal elections.
The first message sent over ARPANET, the internet's ancestor, went from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969. It was supposed to be "LOGIN," but the system crashed after "LO."
Computer engineer Ray Tomlinson sent the first network email in 1971 and chose the @ symbol to separate the user's name from the computer's name.
The first webcam was set up at the University of Cambridge in 1991 to let researchers check whether the coffee pot in the Trojan Room was full.
The first item sold on eBay, then called AuctionWeb, in 1995 was a broken laser pointer that sold for $14.83 to a buyer who collected broken laser pointers.
The first YouTube video, "Me at the zoo," was uploaded on April 23, 2005, by co-founder Jawed Karim and shows him at the San Diego Zoo talking about elephants for 18 seconds.
Lombardi's in New York City, which opened in 1905, is widely considered the first licensed pizzeria in the US.
Pizza Hut opened its first restaurant in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, started by brothers Dan and Frank Carney with $600 borrowed from their mother.
In 2001, Pizza Hut delivered a pizza to the International Space Station, making it the first pizza delivered to space.
The word "pizza" appears in a Latin document from Gaeta, Italy, in 997 AD, though the food it referred to was very different from modern pizza.
Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, claims to have served the first hamburger in America in 1900, though several other places dispute that title.
White Castle, founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921, is considered the first fast-food hamburger chain.
The first lab-grown beef burger, unveiled in London in 2013 by scientist Mark Post, cost about $330,000 to produce.
Conveyor-belt sushi was invented by Yoshiaki Shiraishi, who opened the first one in Osaka in 1958 after being inspired by a conveyor belt at a beer factory.
Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell in Downey, California, in 1962.
In 2024, Taquería El Califa de León in Mexico City became the first taco stand to earn a Michelin star.
The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952 in Salt Lake City, Utah, not Kentucky.
The first modern chocolate bar was made by Fry's in England in 1847.
Ramen developed from Chinese wheat noodles, and Rairaiken, which opened in Tokyo in 1910, is often called Japan's first ramen shop.
In 2015, Tsuta in Tokyo became the first ramen shop to earn a Michelin star.
The first Indian restaurant in Britain was the Hindoostanee Coffee House, opened in London in 1810 by Sake Dean Mahomed.
Massaman curry was ranked first on CNN's 2011 list of the world's 50 best foods.
The original 1966 Toyota Corolla had a tiny 1.1-liter engine making only about 60 horsepower.
The first-generation Volkswagen Golf was sold in the US and Canada as the Rabbit.
The first-generation Volkswagen Golf convertible got the nickname "strawberry basket" because of its built-in roll bar.
The first Toyota RAV4 came as a three-door model.
The first Toyota RAV4 used car-like unibody construction rather than a truck's body-on-frame design.
Ford took about 22,000 orders for the Mustang on its first day, and it passed 1 million sales by March 1966.
The first Ford Mustang sold was bought by accident by Canadian airline pilot Stanley Tucker.
The Chevrolet Corvette debuted in 1953, and only 300 were built that first year, all in Polo White with fiberglass bodies.
The C8 Corvette, introduced for the 2020 model year, was the first production Corvette with a mid-engine design.
The Corvette E-Ray, introduced for the 2024 model year, is the first all-wheel-drive Corvette.
The first Chevrolet Corvette was designed under GM design chief Harley Earl.
The Jeep Wrangler was introduced in 1986 as a 1987 model, replacing the CJ, and its first generation had square headlights.
The Tesla Model Y was the world's best-selling car in 2023, the first time an electric vehicle took that title.
The wheel was invented around 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, and it was first used as a potter's wheel for making pottery before anyone put it on a vehicle.
George Ferris built the first Ferris wheel for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as America's answer to the Eiffel Tower.
John Boyd Dunlop developed the first practical air-filled tire in 1888 to make his son's tricycle ride more comfortable.
Paper money was first widely used in China during the Song dynasty in the 11th century.
Joseph Gayetty sold the first commercially packaged toilet paper in the US in 1857.
The first compasses were made in ancient China from lodestone, a naturally magnetic rock, and were used for fortune-telling and feng shui before navigation.
Chinese scientist Shen Kuo described a magnetized needle compass in 1088 and noted that it doesn't point exactly north.
Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lipperhey applied for the first known patent for a telescope in 1608.
Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope in 1668, using a curved mirror instead of lenses to gather light.
Hero of Alexandria described the aeolipile, a spinning steam-powered device, in the first century AD, but it was treated as a curiosity rather than a machine for work.
Thomas Newcomen's steam engine, introduced in 1712, was mainly used to pump water out of flooded mines.
In 1804, Richard Trevithick's steam locomotive pulled a train along a railway in Wales, the first time a steam locomotive ran on rails.
Robert Fulton's Clermont began the first successful commercial steamboat service in 1807, running up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany.
In 1819, the SS Savannah became the first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic, though it used its sails for most of the trip.
In 1796, Edward Jenner created the first vaccine by infecting a boy named James Phipps with cowpox, which protected him from smallpox.
The word "vaccine" comes from "vacca," the Latin word for cow, because the first vaccine used cowpox.
The World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980, making it the first human disease wiped out by vaccination.
Louis Pasteur created the first rabies vaccine and successfully used it in 1885 on a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister.
The first words spoken by telephone were Alexander Graham Bell saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" to his assistant on March 10, 1876.
The first phone book was published in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 and listed only about 50 names.
The first transcontinental phone call was made in 1915, when Alexander Graham Bell in New York called Thomas Watson in San Francisco.
The first 911 emergency call in the US was made in Haleyville, Alabama, in 1968.
Thomas Edison didn't invent the first light bulb, but he developed the first practical, long-lasting incandescent bulb in 1879 after earlier inventors like Humphry Davy and Joseph Swan.
Thomas Edison opened the Pearl Street Station in New York City in 1882, the first commercial central power plant in the US.
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal, the Morse code letter "S," sent from England to Newfoundland.
Reginald Fessenden is credited with what is often called the first radio broadcast of voice and music, on Christmas Eve in 1906.
KDKA in Pittsburgh made the first commercial radio broadcast on November 2, 1920, reporting the presidential election results.
The Regency TR-1, released in 1954, was the first commercially sold transistor radio.
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in London in 1926, using a mechanical system.
Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first fully electronic television system in 1927, and he said he came up with the idea at age 14 while plowing a field.
The first official TV commercial was a Bulova watch ad that aired in 1941 and cost about $9.
The first TV remote, Zenith's "Lazy Bones" from 1950, was connected to the TV by a wire.
The first televised US presidential debate was between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960.
Ada Lovelace wrote what is considered the first computer program in the 1840s, for Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine.
ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic computers, weighed about 30 tons and used around 18,000 vacuum tubes.
The Intel 4004, released in 1971, was the first commercial microprocessor.
The IBM Simon, released in 1994, is considered the first smartphone.
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first handheld mobile phone call on April 3, 1973, calling a rival at Bell Labs.
Apple's App Store launched in July 2008 with about 500 apps.
The first Android phone was the HTC Dream, sold as the T-Mobile G1, released in 2008.
Uruguay hosted and won the first FIFA World Cup in 1930.
The first FIFA Women's World Cup was held in China in 1991, and the US won the title.
The first official Test cricket match was played between Australia and England in Melbourne in 1877.
The first international cricket match was played between the US and Canada in New York in 1844.
The 1992 US Olympic basketball "Dream Team," featuring Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird, was the first US Olympic team with NBA players and won gold in Barcelona.
Basketball debuted at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where games were played outdoors and the final was played in pouring rain.
Wimbledon, first held in 1877, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world.
Men's field hockey first appeared at the 1908 London Olympics.
The first men's Hockey World Cup was held in Barcelona in 1971.
Alexander Cartwright and the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club wrote rules in 1845 that shaped modern baseball.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first fully professional baseball team in 1869.
The first college football game was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.
The first Rugby World Cup was held in 1987.
"Houston" was the first word spoken from the Moon because Mission Control was at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
New York City was the first capital of the US under the Constitution, and George Washington was inaugurated at Federal Hall in 1789.
In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first US states to legalize recreational marijuana.
The first Starbucks opened at Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971.
Saguaro cacti grow naturally only in the Sonoran Desert and may take 50 to 70 years to grow their first arms.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, which in 2001 became the world's first International Dark Sky City.
The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in 1885, is often called the world's first skyscraper.
The Cairo Metro opened in 1987 as the first metro in Africa.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which began trading Dutch East India Company shares in 1602, is considered the world's oldest stock exchange.
Lucille Ball became the first woman to run a major TV studio when she took over Desilu Productions.
"Cheers" ranked near the bottom of the ratings in its first season and was almost canceled.
Chris Pratt's character Andy Dwyer was originally supposed to appear only in the first season of "Parks and Recreation."
Bananas curve because they grow upward toward the sunlight after first hanging down, a process called negative geotropism.
In English, "orange" was the name of the fruit before it became the name of the color.
Elizabeth White and Frederick Coville first cultivated blueberries in New Jersey in the 1910s.
Helium was discovered in the Sun's light in 1868, decades before it was found on Earth.
Helium on Earth is made by the radioactive decay of elements underground and is collected from natural gas wells. It was first found in US natural gas in Kansas in 1905.
Much of the universe's gold is thought to be created when neutron stars collide, which scientists observed for the first time in 2017.
Humphry Davy first isolated sodium in 1807 using electrolysis.
China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is believed to have died after taking mercury pills he thought would make him immortal.
The Catholic Church considers Saint Peter the first pope.
Saint Francis of Assisi created the first live nativity scene in Greccio, Italy, in 1223.
Saint Francis of Assisi is the first person recorded to have received the stigmata, wounds matching those of Jesus's crucifixion.
Pope Francis was the first pope to take the name Francis, choosing it in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Saint Patrick was kidnapped by pirates at about age 16 and enslaved in Ireland as a shepherd for about six years.
The first recorded Saint Patrick's Day parade in America was held in 1601 in St. Augustine, Florida, then a Spanish colony.
Geoffrey Chaucer may have been the first to link Valentine's Day to romance, in his 1380s poem "Parlement of Foules."
Saint Augustine's "Confessions" is often called the first Western autobiography.
When MTV launched on August 1, 1981, the first music video it played was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
Cher's 1998 hit "Believe" was the first major song to use Auto-Tune as an obvious vocal effect.
The first Grammy Awards ceremony was held in 1959.
About 60 million people watched Elvis Presley's first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1956.
About 73 million Americans watched the Beatles' first live appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on February 9, 1964.
The first commercially successful electric guitar was the Rickenbacker "Frying Pan," introduced in the early 1930s.
The Sugarhill Gang's 1979 song "Rapper's Delight" was the first rap song to reach the Top 40 in the US.
Run-DMC's self-titled album was the first rap album certified gold, in 1984.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip hop act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 2007.
Patsy Cline was the first female solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in 1973.
Aretha Franklin was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987.
Prince played 27 instruments on his debut album.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his first pieces at about age five.
The first jazz recording was made by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917.
Ella Fitzgerald was the first Black woman to win a Grammy, in 1959.
"Despacito" spent 16 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and it was the first mostly Spanish-language number one since "Macarena" in 1996.
The Latin Grammy Awards were first held in 2000.
Bad Bunny's "Un Verano Sin Ti" was the first all-Spanish album nominated for the Grammy for Album of the Year, in 2023.
PSY's "Gangnam Style" was the first YouTube video to reach one billion views, in 2012.
BTS's "Dynamite" was the first K-pop song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, in 2020.
BLACKPINK became the first K-pop group to headline Coachella, in 2023.
Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues," recorded in 1920, was the first blues recording by a Black singer.
Toots and the Maytals' 1968 song "Do the Reggay" was one of the first songs to use the word "reggae."
Shakespeare is credited with the first recorded use of hundreds of English words, including "eyeball," "swagger," and "lonely."
Shakespeare's First Folio, published in 1623 after his death by his fellow actors, preserved 18 plays that might otherwise have been lost, and a copy sold for about $10 million in 2020.
Most of Charles Dickens's novels were first published in monthly or weekly installments, which kept readers hooked on cliffhangers.
Jane Austen published her novels anonymously. Her first was credited only to "A Lady."
"Pride and Prejudice" was originally titled "First Impressions."
Mark Twain was among the first authors to submit a typewritten manuscript to a publisher.
The first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury published it in 1997.
The first printing of the first Harry Potter book was just 500 hardback copies.
The first Harry Potter book was retitled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the US.
Agatha Christie was one of the first British people to stand-up surf, in Hawaii in 1924.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the first line of "The Hobbit" on a blank page while grading exam papers.
Surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant in South Africa in 1967.
The first bristle toothbrush was made in China in 1498.
Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor first and a painter second.
According to legend, Pablo Picasso's first word was "piz," short for the Spanish word for pencil.
Frida Kahlo was the first 20th-century Mexican artist to have a work bought by the Louvre, in 1939.
The coconut octopus carries coconut shells around and uses them as portable shelters, one of the first known examples of tool use in invertebrates.
A live giant squid was photographed in the wild for the first time in 2004 and filmed in 2012.
A colossal squid was filmed alive in the wild for the first time in 2025.
Potatoes were first domesticated in the Andes Mountains of South America, in what's now Peru and Bolivia, thousands of years ago.
In 1995, potatoes became the first vegetable grown in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on TV, in 1952.
The first cultivated carrots were purple or yellow. Orange carrots became popular in the Netherlands in the 1600s.
In 2015, astronauts on the International Space Station ate red romaine lettuce they had grown on board.
The first jack-o'-lanterns in Ireland were carved from turnips.
Early colonists made pumpkin "pies" by filling hollowed-out pumpkins.
"Daisy Bell" was the first song sung by a computer, in 1961.
Indra Devi was the first Western woman to study with Krishnamacharya.
Krishnamacharya at first refused to teach Indra Devi because she was a foreign woman.
Indra Devi opened a yoga school in Shanghai in 1939.
Indra Devi was known as the "First Lady of Yoga."
The World Series of Poker started in 1970 at Binion's Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas, and Johnny Moss was voted its first champion.
Playing cards were first used in China during the Tang dynasty in the 800s.
A first-edition "shadowless" Charizard is one of the most valuable Pokémon cards.
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she's the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, physics and chemistry.
Marie Curie was the first female professor at the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1995, Marie Curie became the first woman buried in the Panthéon in Paris for her own achievements.
Alan Turing wrote one of the first chess programs, which he had to run by hand.
The first printing of "On the Origin of Species" sold out on its first day in 1859.
France tried to build the Panama Canal in the 1880s but gave up after thousands of workers died, mostly from diseases like malaria and yellow fever.
A tunnel under the English Channel was first proposed in 1802.
The first piece of the International Space Station, the Zarya module, launched in 1998.
Sun Yat-sen proposed a dam on the Yangtze in 1919.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
Emily Warren Roebling oversaw much of the Brooklyn Bridge's construction after her husband, the chief engineer, fell ill, and she was the first to cross it.
Sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi first proposed a giant lighthouse statue for the Suez Canal before designing the Statue of Liberty.
China's Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019.
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter made the first powered flight on another planet, on Mars in 2021.
Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope, by William Herschel in 1781.
A year on Neptune is about 165 Earth years, and in 2011 it completed its first orbit since being discovered.
A supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, about 4 million times the mass of the Sun, sits at the center of the Milky Way, and its first image was released in 2022.
The first image of a black hole, in the galaxy M87, was released in 2019.
Gravitational waves from two merging black holes were first detected by LIGO in 2015.
Cygnus X-1 was the first object widely accepted as a black hole.
The wheel was likely first used for making pottery in Mesopotamia around 3500 BC, before anyone put wheels on carts.
The first Ferris wheel, built by engineer George Ferris, debuted at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as America's answer to the Eiffel Tower.
John Boyd Dunlop developed the first practical air-filled tire in 1888 to give his son a smoother ride on his tricycle.
Bi Sheng invented movable type made of baked clay in China around 1040 AD, about 400 years before Gutenberg.
Hero of Alexandria described the aeolipile, a spinning steam-powered ball, in the 1st century AD, though it was treated as a novelty rather than a working machine.
Thomas Savery patented a steam pump in 1698 nicknamed "The Miner's Friend," designed to pump water out of flooded mines.
Thomas Newcomen built the first commercially successful steam engine in 1712 to pump water from mines in England.
Richard Trevithick built the first full-scale working steam locomotive, which ran on a track in Wales in 1804.
Robert Fulton's Clermont became the first commercially successful steamboat in 1807, carrying passengers up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany.
Edison's Pearl Street Station opened in Manhattan in 1882 as the first commercial central power plant in the US, lighting buildings in the financial district.
The first words Bell spoke over the telephone, on March 10, 1876, were "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."
The first commercial telephone exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 with 21 subscribers.
The first transcontinental phone call was made in 1915, when Bell in New York called his old assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco.
Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen, patented in 1886, is widely considered the first practical gasoline-powered automobile.
In 1888, Bertha Benz drove her husband's Motorwagen about 66 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in the first long-distance road trip by car.
French engineer Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built a steam-powered vehicle in 1769, designed to haul cannons, and it's often called the first self-propelled road vehicle.
The first speeding ticket was given in England in 1896 to Walter Arnold, who was driving 8 mph in a 2 mph zone.
Charles Kettering invented the electric starter, which first appeared on the 1912 Cadillac and ended the need to start cars with a dangerous hand crank.
The Wright brothers' first powered flight on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet.
The longest of the Wright brothers' four flights on December 17, 1903, was flown by Wilbur and covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.
French aviator Louis Blériot became the first person to fly an airplane across the English Channel in 1909.
The first scheduled commercial airline was the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line in Florida, which started flying passengers across Tampa Bay in 1914.
Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927, flying from New York to Paris in about 33.5 hours.
The first jet-powered airplane to fly was Germany's Heinkel He 178 in 1939, though British engineer Frank Whittle had patented a jet engine design in 1930.
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain built the first working transistor at Bell Labs in December 1947, working in a group led by William Shockley.
Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments built the first integrated circuit in 1958, and Robert Noyce independently made a silicon version in 1959.
Intel's 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, released in 1971, had about 2,300 transistors, while modern chips have tens of billions.
Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer, in the 1830s, but it was never built.
Ada Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer because in 1843 she published an algorithm meant to run on Babbage's Analytical Engine.
Konrad Zuse's Z3, completed in Germany in 1941, is considered the first working programmable, fully automatic computer.
The first website, info.cern.ch, went online in 1991 at CERN and explained how the World Wide Web worked.
The first registered .com domain name was symbolics.com, registered on March 15, 1985.
The first webcam watched a coffee pot in a computer lab at the University of Cambridge so researchers could check if there was coffee without walking over.
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first handheld cell phone call on April 3, 1973, calling a rival engineer at Bell Labs to brag.
Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on January 9, 2007, and it went on sale on June 29, 2007.
The Sharp J-SH04, released in Japan in 2000, is generally considered the first commercially sold camera phone.
Corning's Gorilla Glass, used on the first iPhone and billions of phones since, was based on a strong glass Corning had developed back in the 1960s.
The first recorded labor strike in history happened in ancient Egypt around 1157 BC, when tomb builders stopped work because their rations were late.
Ancient Egyptians created one of the first 365-day calendars.
Cleopatra was from a Greek ruling family and was reportedly the first in her dynasty to learn the Egyptian language.
The first recorded Olympic Games were held in 776 BC, and athletes competed nude.
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek device often called the world's first analog computer.
Greek scholar Eratosthenes estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC with remarkable accuracy.
The word "alphabet" comes from "alpha" and "beta," the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.
Cuneiform, developed in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC, is one of the earliest writing systems.
Uruk in Mesopotamia was one of the world's first cities.
Chinese scientist Zhang Heng invented the first known seismoscope in 132 AD.
China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, standardized writing, coins, and even cart axle widths.
The Columbia River Gorge became the first National Scenic Area in the US in 1986.
The Historic Columbia River Highway, built between 1913 and 1922, was the first planned scenic highway in the US.
Thomas Condon studied fossils in the John Day region in the 1860s.
On October 16, 1846, dentist William Morton gave the first public demonstration of surgery using ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital, a date now called "Ether Day."
Georgia doctor Crawford Long used ether during surgery in 1842 but didn't publish his results until years later.
One of the first X-ray images ever taken showed the bones of Röntgen's wife's hand, with her wedding ring.
Wilhelm Röntgen won the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for discovering X-rays.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first saw bacteria in the 1670s and called them "animalcules."
In 1847, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis showed that handwashing reduced deaths among new mothers, but many doctors rejected his idea.
Surgical masks were first used in the late 1890s.
Joseph Lister was the first medical doctor to be made a member of the House of Lords in Britain.
The first person treated with insulin was 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, in 1922.
Genetically engineered human insulin was approved in 1982.
Some of the first blood transfusions, in the 1660s, used blood from animals like lambs.
The first hospital blood bank in the US opened at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in 1937, and its founder coined the term "blood bank."
The first stethoscope was a wooden tube for one ear.
Scientists published the first complete, gap-free human genome sequence in 2022.
Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher first discovered DNA in 1869.
Francis Crick described DNA's structure in a 1953 letter to his son.
The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 between identical twins in Boston, and surgeon Joseph Murray later won a Nobel Prize.
The first partial face transplant was performed in France in 2005.
The first hand transplant was performed in France in 1998.
The first baby born after a uterus transplant was born in Sweden in 2014.
Thomas Starzl performed the first human liver transplant in 1963.
Arne Larsson received the first implanted pacemaker in Sweden in 1958 and went on to use 26 different devices before dying at 86.
Raymond Damadian performed the first full-body MRI scan of a human in 1977.
France's Iseult MRI scanner produced its first images of the human brain in 2024.
Casgevy, approved in 2023, was the first CRISPR treatment, used for sickle cell disease.
In 2025, a baby known as KJ became one of the first people treated with a personalized gene-editing therapy.