List of firsts

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

Contents

1 Exploration

Exploration

First disputed expedition to the (geographic) North Pole: Robert Edwin Peary and his employee Matthew Henson and four Inuit men Ootah, Seegloo, Egingway, and Ooqueah. April 9, 1909
First people to sight the (geographic) North Pole: Roald Amundsen and his sponsor Lincoln Ellsworth from an aircraft piloted by Umberto Nobile, between May 11 and May 13, 1926
First people to reach the (geographic) North Pole: Lt. Col. Joseph O. Fletcher and Lt. William P. Benedict landed their plane. May 3, 1952
First people to reach the South Pole: Roald Amundsen and his party - Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting. December 14, 1911
First (and only, as of 2005) people to reach the deepest point on 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 recorded deaths on Everest: 7 Sherpas die in avalanche in 1922
First successful summit (via the South-East Ridge Route) Tenzing Norgay & Sir Edmund Hillary May 29, 1953
First successful summit via the North Ridge by a Chinese team on May 25, 1960
First American to reach summit James Whittaker in 1963
First The first ascent of the West Ridge on May 22, 1963 Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein . Also the first traverse of the South East Ridge
First person to summit Everest twice: Nawang Gombu Sherpa May 20, 1965
First woman to summit is Junko Tabei of Japan on 16 May 1975 via the South-East Ridge
First woman to summit from the North (Tibettan side is a Tibbettan woman named Phantog.
First summit from the South West face on September 24, 1975 are Dougal Haston and Doug Scott
First Ascent without bottled oxygen is by Peter Habeler (Austria) and Reinhold Messner (Italy) on the 8th May 1978
First European woman and the third woman to summit Everest is Wanda Rutkiewicz
First woman to die on Everest is Hannelore Schmatz , after becoming the 4th woman to summit Everest
First Winter ascent is by Krzysztof Wielicki of Poland on the 17th February 1980
First Indian woman summit was Bachendri Pal on 23 May 1984
First woman to climb without oxygen was Lydia Bradey of New Zealand on 14th November 1988
First true ski descent by Davo Karnicar
First snowboard descent by Marco Siffredi
First blind person to Summit Everest is Erik Weihenmayer in 2000

First official recognition of AIDS: Centers for Disease Control issued a press release 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 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
First telecommunications system: Claude Chappe's semaphore lines. Between Paris and Lille in 1792

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

First human to run a mile under 4 minutes: Roger Bannister. (1954)
First woman to swim the English Channel: Gertrude Ederle. (1926)
First Olympian disqualified for drug use: Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall at the 1968 Summer Olympics
First bungee jump: by four members of the Dangerous Sports Club led by David Kirke, from the 250ft Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. 1 April, 1979

First case of an algorithm written for a computer: Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine written in 1842
First programmable digital computer: Z3. 1941
First programmable electronic computer: ENIAC. 1946
First programmer: Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
First instant messenger: ICQ released in November, 1996

First victim of the punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering: Dafydd ap Gruffydd. October 3, 1283
First person to be executed by the guillotine: Nicolas J. Pelletier, highwayman. April 25, 1792
First instance of a murder captured live on television : Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald. November 24, 1963. (See pic).