26 Andrew Lyne Retracts Phantom Planet
The first planet reported to orbit another star turned out to be a mathematical error, but its retraction earned an ovation. In 1991, astronomer Andrew Lyne and his team claimed to have discovered a planetary companion around a pulsar, only to realize later they had failed to properly remove the effects of Earth’s motion from their analysis. When Lyne publicly announced his retraction and explained the mistake at an American Astronomical Society meeting, his scientific peers gave him thunderous applause for his courage and intellectual integrity.
27. The first American to appear on the Soviet children’s program “Good Night, Little Ones!” was Fred Rogers. In September 1987, Rogers traveled to Moscow to record segments for both the long-running Soviet series and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. His Soviet appearance aired in December 1987, during the Washington summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
28. The first openly gay Hollywood star is widely considered to have been actor William “Billy” Haines. During the 1920s, he became a major star through films including The Midnight Express, Little Annie Rooney, and Navy Blues while sharing his life with partner Jimmie Shields. In 1933, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer reportedly ordered Haines to enter a sham marriage or give up Shields, and Haines chose his partner. MGM terminated his contract, but Haines made several minor films through 1934 before leaving acting and building a successful interior-design career.
29. The first fully trained paramedics in the world were young Black men recruited from Pittsburgh’s economically depressed Hill District in 1967, where many had been dismissed as “unemployable.” Freedom House Ambulance Service put them through an intensive 300-hour course covering anatomy, CPR, nursing, advanced first aid, medication, and emergency driving. Its five ambulances eventually handled nearly 6,000 calls annually, and the paramedics reportedly saved 200 lives during their first year. Pittsburgh replaced Freedom House with a predominantly white city service in 1975, but its training methods and medical textbook helped shape modern EMS while its pioneers were largely forgotten.
30. The first known deaths of storm chasers or meteorologists caused directly by a tornado occurred on May 31, 2013, when Tim Samaras, his 24-year-old son Paul, and meteorologist Carl Young were killed near El Reno, Oklahoma. The tornado unexpectedly changed direction and expanded from approximately 1 mile to 2.6 miles wide in about 30 seconds as it closed in on their TWISTEX vehicle. At 2.6 miles across, the El Reno tornado was the widest ever recorded.
31 Greg LeMond Wins Despite Buckshot
The first American cyclist to win the Tour de France twice was Greg LeMond, whose 1989 victory completed a remarkable comeback. Two years earlier, he had been accidentally shot in the back and side with approximately 60 shotgun pellets during a turkey hunt, causing him to lose about 65% of his blood volume. LeMond won the Tour with 35 pellets still embedded in his body, including three in the lining of his heart and five in his liver. He won again in 1990 and remains the only American officially credited with a Tour de France victory.
32. The world’s first music-streaming service used the Telharmonium, a 200-ton electrical instrument patented in 1897 and introduced commercially in New York in 1906. Subscribers asked telephone operators to connect them to a central “music plant” at Broadway and 39th Street, which transmitted live music to receivers fitted with paper funnels for amplification. Two musicians reportedly played customized keyboards continuously, 24 hours a day, allowing listeners to turn live music on and off like a household utility. The service reached the public in 1907, but interference with telephone calls and enormous operating costs caused it to close in 1916.
33. The first exceptionally clear X-ray diffraction image of DNA’s B form was Photo 51, produced in 1952 through research led by British chemist Rosalind Franklin. Her doctoral student Raymond Gosling captured the image while working under her supervision at King’s College London. Maurice Wilkins later showed it to James Watson without Franklin’s knowledge or permission, and Watson and Francis Crick used its features alongside other evidence to construct their double-helix model. The 1962 Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, while Franklin had passed away in 1958, and the prize committee did not acknowledge Gosling’s contribution.
34. The first official Social Security record belonged to John David Sweeney Jr., a 23-year-old shipping clerk from New Rochelle, New York. On December 1, 1936, an official selected Sweeney’s record from the first block of 1,000 processed applications and designated it as the symbolic first, although many cards had already been issued elsewhere. Sweeney contributed to the program but died of a heart attack in 1974 at age 61, before receiving any retirement benefits. His widow later collected survivor benefits based on his contributions until her death in 1982.
35. The first African republic to declare independence was Liberia, which remains Africa’s oldest continuously independent country. The American Colonization Society established its first settlement there in 1822 to create a self-sufficient colony for free-born and formerly enslaved Black Americans, and Liberia declared independence in 1847. Its capital, Monrovia, was named after U.S. President James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the colonization project.
36 Maria Daume Completes Infantry Training
The first woman to join the U.S. Marine Corps infantry through the traditional entry-level training process was Maria Daume. Born in a Siberian prison, she was orphaned at age 2, adopted by Americans at 4, and raised in New York. In 2017, she graduated near the top of her class as a mortar marine, only six months after the training process opened to women.
37. The first crewed vessel to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench was the bathyscaphe Trieste. During its descent on January 23, 1960, an outer Plexiglas window pane cracked after the vessel passed 9,000 meters, shaking the entire craft. Pilots Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh continued and successfully reached Challenger Deep at a depth of approximately 10,916 meters, where they spent 20 minutes on the ocean floor.
38. The first woman in Asia to receive a bilateral above-elbow hand transplant was Indian engineering student Shreya Siddanagowder, who lost both hands in a bus accident in 2016. In 2017, she underwent a 13-hour operation using limbs from a 21-year-old male donor. Although the transplanted hands were initially darker and hairier, they gradually became lighter and more feminine in appearance, bringing their color closer to her natural skin tone. Doctors suspect her body’s lower melanin production contributed to the change.
39. The first African American ophthalmology resident at New York University was Dr. Patricia Bath, who completed her training there in 1973. She later invented the Laserphaco Probe, a minimally invasive device that used a laser to remove cataracts and helped patients around the world regain their sight. When Bath patented the device in 1988, she became the first Black female physician in the United States to receive a patent for a medical invention.
40. The first road vehicle to exceed 100 km/h (62 mph) was an electric car named La Jamais Contente. In 1899, Belgian driver Camille Jenatzy drove the torpedo-shaped vehicle at 105.882 km/h (65.792 mph) near Paris, breaking the previous land-speed record. Despite this achievement, gasoline-powered vehicles soon overtook electric cars and dominated the following century.
41 Robert Odlum’s Brooklyn Bridge Fatality
The first man to jump from the Brooklyn Bridge was American swimming instructor Robert Emmet Odlum in 1885. He hoped to demonstrate that people did not die simply from falling through the air, believing the act would encourage those trapped in burning buildings to jump into safety nets. A strong wind turned him during the fall, causing him to strike the water at an angle with his feet and right hip. He died 43 minutes later, and an autopsy listed concussion as the cause of death while also finding three broken ribs and several ruptured organs.
42. The first commercially successful plain-paper photocopier was the Xerox 914, introduced in 1959. Because the mechanically complex machine tended to overheat and catch fire, Xerox supplied each unit with a “scorch eliminator,” which was simply a small fire extinguisher. One of the two copiers at its televised public debut caught fire, while consumer advocate Ralph Nader reported that his office machine caught fire three times in four months.
43. The first permanently staffed mountaintop observatory in the world was Lick Observatory, completed in 1888 using a $700,000 bequest from James Lick, once California’s wealthiest man. The observatory was given to the University of California and housed the world’s largest refracting telescope at the time. In 1887, Lick’s body was reburied beneath the future telescope site, and his will stipulated that fresh flowers be placed on his grave “always.”
44. The first official circulation coin of the United States was the Fugio cent, authorized by Congress in 1787. Its designer is unknown but traditionally believed to have been Benjamin Franklin, whose earlier currency used similar imagery. The front displayed a sun and sundial with the words “Fugio” and “Mind Your Business,” while the reverse showed 13 linked rings representing the original states around the motto “We Are One.”
45. The first women’s soccer league in which every player was paid as a professional was the Women’s United Soccer Association. Founded in 2000 following the popularity of the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup, it began playing in 2001 with eight U.S. teams. The league spent a five-year, $40 million budget during its first season and suspended operations in 2003 after three seasons and cumulative losses of approximately $100 million.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
46 David Wolf Votes From Orbit
The first American astronaut to vote from space was David Wolf, who cast an electronic absentee ballot from Russia’s Mir space station in 1997. Texas created the procedure after astronaut John Blaha was unable to vote during his 1996 Mir mission because his flight began before absentee ballots were finalized. Astronauts registered in Texas, where NASA’s Johnson Space Center is located, can receive secure electronic ballots while listing their current address as “low-Earth orbit.”
47. The first production car to explore Antarctica was a ruby-red Volkswagen Beetle named Antarctica 1, donated by Volkswagen in 1963. It spent a year at Australia’s remote Mawson Station, enduring temperatures of -52 C and winds reaching 200 km/h. Its air-cooled engine never froze, and its tightly sealed body resisted drifting snow so effectively that the scientists nicknamed it the “Red Terror.” After returning to Australia with only minor repairs, it won the 1964 BP Rally.
48. The first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army was Charles Young in 1917. Although he was positioned for promotion to brigadier general during World War I, resistance from white officers led the War Department to remove him from active duty, officially citing high blood pressure. In 1918, Young rode on horseback from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate his physical fitness. He was reinstated as a colonel later that year, although the Army did not fully rescind his forced retirement.
49. The first SMS text message was sent on December 3, 1992, by 22-year-old British test engineer Neil Papworth. Because mobile phones could not yet send text messages, Papworth transmitted it from a computer over Vodafone’s network to an Orbitel 901 phone carried by company director Richard Jarvis. The historic message contained just two words: “Merry Christmas.”
50. The first Black actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television show was François Clemmons, whom Fred Rogers cast as Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1968. Clemmons initially hesitated to portray a police officer because law enforcement had not been a friendly presence in the neighborhood where he grew up. In 1969, Rogers invited Clemmons to cool his feet beside him in a small pool, creating a widely recognized statement against racial segregation.
