List of firsts

This is a list of firsts. This list includes notable first-time occurrences, along with those involved.
Government
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
Leaders
Antiquity to the seventeenth century
* First Emperor of : 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
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 (), 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 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 of successful transplants
* 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—come here—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 , 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 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

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