List of firsts

This is a list of firsts. This list includes notable first-time occurrences, along with those involved.

Laws and constitution

 * First law written in cuneiform - by Urukagina 2350 BC
 * First codified Constitution - the oldest codified constitution in the world, Sumeria ca. 2300 BC

Antiquity to the seventeenth 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 Tsar (Tzar): Simeon I of Bulgaria (913)
 * First Christian Monarch of Sweden: Olof Skötkonung (995)
 * First Sultan of the Ottoman Empire: Osman I

Eighteenth 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 (1867)
 * First Prime Minister of Australia: Edmund Barton (1901)
 * First woman elected to the British House of Commons: Countess Markiewicz, December 1918 general election (did not take her seat)
 * First woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons: Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, by-election, 28 November 1919
 * First female Acting President:
 * Unofficial: Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, United States (1919)
 * Official: Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa, Mongolia (1953)


 * First non-royal female head of state: Chairman Khertek Anchimaa-Toka, Tuvan People's Republic (1940)
 * First female Prime Minister: Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka (1960)
 * 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 President of the Republic of Macedonia: Kiro Gligorov. (1992)
 * 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 Prime Minister of Croatia: Jadranka Kosor (6 July 2009)
 * First half-black President of the United States: Barack Hussein Obama
 * First female Prime Minister of Turkey: Tansu Çiller

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)
 * First openly gay leader of major political party: André Boisclair (served 2005-2007)
 * 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)

See also : List of the first female holders of political office in Europe

Crime and punishment

 * First recorded person to be executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering: Dafydd ap Gruffydd, England, October 3, 1283.
 * First person to be executed by guillotine: Nicolas J. Pelletier, highwayman, April 25, 1792.
 * First person to be executed by electric chair: William Kemmler, Auburn, New York, August 6, 1890.
 * First commercial airliner to be hijacked: Miss Macao, owned by Cathay Pacific, on a flight from Macau to Hong Kong, July 16, 1948.
 * First murder to be captured live on television: Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, November 24, 1963. (See photograph.)
 * First person to be executed by lethal injection: Charles Brooks, Jr., Huntsville, Texas, December 7, 1982.

Society and economy

 * First university in the world, Constantinople, Roman Empire, 27 February 425.
 * First banknote: Issued by Stockholm Banco, Sweden, in 1661.
 * First central bank: Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden, founded in 1668 from Stockholm Banco.
 * First civil union between a same-sex couple: Axel and Eigil Axgil, Denmark in 1989.
 * First same-sex marriages: Four couples in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on April 1, 2001.

War

 * First British Whole Naval fleet to surrender to a single enemy fleet on September 10, 1813 in the war of 1812 after the battle of Lake Erie.
 * First battle between ironclads: Battle of Hampton Roads, March 8, 1862.
 * First bomb dropped from aircraft: By Italian army in Libya, November 1, 1911.
 * First tank in combat: British Mark I tank on September 15, 1916.
 * First (and only, as of 2009) acts of nuclear war: The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945.
 * First hydrogen bomb tested: Ivy Mike, on Enewatak in the Pacific Ocean on November 1, 1952.
 * First reference of the term Cold War: By Bernard Baruch during a speech before the South Carolina state legislature on April 16, 1947.

Travel and exploration

 * See also List of circumnavigations.


 * First Shipwreck: see oldest shipwreck
 * First known crossing of the Atlantic Ocean: Leif Ericson, around 1010
 * First crossing of the Pacific Ocean: Ferdinand Magellan, 1520-21.
 * First people to circumnavigate the globe in a single voyage: 18 survivors of Magellan's expedition led by Juan Sebastián Elcano and including Antonio Pigafetta, starting August 10, 1519 from Seville, Spain to September 6, 1522 to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, covering 81,449 km.
 * 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, ) 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 mother and son to row any ocean: Janice Meek and Daniel Byles, crossing the Atlantic in the Atlantic Rowing Race, 1997-1998.

Rail transport

 * First steam-powered vehicle: Built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769.
 * First railway steam locomotive: Built by Richard Trevithick in 1804.
 * First commercial locomotive: The Salamanca, built in 1812 (on rack railway).
 * First commercial locomotive on plain rail: Puffing Billy, 1813.
 * First public steam-powered railway line: Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1825.
 * First inter-city steam-powered railway: Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1830.
 * First underground railway: Metropolitan Railway, completed in 1863.
 * First public electric railway: Germany, 1881.
 * First electric underground railway: City and South London Railway, 1890.
 * First diesel-electric locomotive: Built by General Electric in 1917.

Aviation

 * See List of firsts in aviation.

Geographic North Pole

 * See List of firsts in the Geographic North Pole.

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 Toyota Hilux pickup truck, specially modified by Arctic Trucks in Iceland. The two were accompanied by seven others, including the camera and sound crew, two Icelandic mechanics (Hjalti Hjaltason and Haraldur Pétursson), and a soldier of unstated nationality in two other specially modified vehicles.

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 fourth 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 supplementary 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; Erik Weihenmayer (2000)
 * First North Face ski descent by Tormod Granheim (2006)
 * First successful summit after a severe case of HAPE: Brian Smith (2007)
 * First sisters to summit Everest together: Darija Bostjančić and Iris Bostjančić of Croatia (19 May 2009)

Beyond the Earth

 * 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 (and first civilian) in space: Valentina Tereshkova (1963)
 * First spacewalk: Aleksei Leonov (1965)
 * First human to walk on the Moon: Neil Armstrong (see Apollo 11) (July 20, 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

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 - Home Insurance Building, Chicago, 10 stories high (138 ft), 1884.
 * First man-made object to reach the stratosphere: Shell fired from the Paris Gun, used during World War I.
 * First picture taken of the Earth's curvature: By Alexander Dahl travelling in an open hydrogen gas balloon. August 31, 1933.
 * First sound recording: A phonautogram containing the opening lines of Torquato Tasso's pastoral drama Aminta is the earliest audible record of recognizable human speech. It was recorded around 1857.
 * First playback of recorded sound: Mary had a little lamb, by Thomas Edison in 1877.

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. 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 Thorfinnsson
 * First observed transit of a planet across the sun, Mercury, by Pierre Gassendi in 1631.
 * First planet discovered by mathematical prediction (as opposed to regular observation): Neptune in September 23, 1846
 * First international scientific collaboration: Observation of the transit of Venus 1761 and 1769
 * First confirmation of extrasolar planets: Three bodies orbiting PSR B1257+12 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail in 1992.
 * First confirmation of an active volcanic eruption occurring on a seamount: by scientists at the University of Hawai‘i on Lo‘ihi in 1996

Life sciences

 * For a list of firsts in organ transplants, see Organ transplant


 * 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, England, born July 25, 1978.
 * 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 cloned animal: an Asian carp cloned in China by Tong Dizhou, 1963.
 * First mammal cloned from a somatic cell: Dolly, a sheep born on July 5, 1996.
 * First cloned camel: Injaz, born April 8, 2009, in Dubai.
 * First cloned dog: Snuppy, an Afghan hound, born April 24, 2005, cloned by a team of 45 led by Hwang Woo-Suk.
 * First face transplant: Isabelle Dinoire, France, November 27, 2005.
 * First person to have both a mother and father who have travelled into space: Elena Andrianovna, daughter of Valentina Tereshkova and Andriyan Nikolayev.

Human 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: By a team led by Dr. James Hardy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, where a chimpanzee heart was transplanted in to a human. 1964.
 * First human-to-human heart transplant: By Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital, from donor Denise Darvall in to Louis Washkansky. December 3, 1967.
 * First artificial pacemaker implant into an infant: Into Jason A. Haines when he was 16 hours old, July 26, 1974.

Commodities

 * First bottled food: in 1809 the French confectioner Nicolas 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

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

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

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&mdash;come here&mdash;I want to see you."
 * 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

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
 * First video game console: Magnavox Odyssey, 1975
 * 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 e-mail correspondence between heads of government: Carl Bildt (Sweden) and Bill Clinton (United States) in 1992
 * 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 general Internet elections: Estonian parliamentary election, 2007

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 m 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 250 ft 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
 * First black person to coach a professional ice hockey team: John Paris Jr. of the International Hockey League's Atlanta Knights (1994).

American football

 * First Heisman Trophy winner: Jay Berwanger, University of Chicago halfback, 1935.
 * First Super Bowl: Green Bay Packers defeat Kansas City Chiefs, 35–10, Los Angeles, California, January 15, 1967.

Association football (soccer)

 * First football player to be knighted: Sir Stanley Matthews, (1965).
 * First football player to take a penalty in a penalty shootout: George Best, in the semi-finals of the Watney Cup, England (1970)
 * First football player to miss a penalty in a penalty shootout: Denis Law, in the semi-finals of the Watney Cup, England (1970)
 * First major football 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 football 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 football 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).

Canadian football

 * First Grey Cup: University of Toronto Varsity Blues defeat Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club 26–6 at Rosedale Field in Toronto, December 4, 1909.

Culture

 * First man or woman in mythology: see First man or woman
 * First person to wear a modern 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
 * First person to make a television broadcast from space: Andriyan Nikolayev, August 1962.
 * First woman to write a #1 Country Music hit: Jenny Lou Carson - 1945 "You Two-time Me Once Too Often".
 * First human cannonball: Rossa Matilda Richter nicknamed Zazel, at the Royal Aquarium London, 1877.
 * First Academy Award ceremony: Los Angeles, California, May 16, 1929.

Film

 * First film ever made: Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed on October 14, 1888
 * First feature-length film: The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906
 * First feature-length sound film: The Jazz Singer, 1927
 * 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 feature-length computer-generated imagery film: Toy Story, 1995
 * 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
 * First actor to portray Superman on screen: Kirk Alyn in the movie serial Superman. 1948.

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

By country

 * India: see List of firsts in India
 * Sweden: see List of firsts in Sweden
 * United States: see List of firsts in the United States