26First Terraforming Project
Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker started the world's first terraforming project on Ascension Island in 1850. The project has turned an arid volcanic wasteland into a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem made completely of foreign plants from all over the world.
27. Noor Inayat Khan was an Indian woman who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her service during World War 2. She was the first female wireless operator to be parachuted into France to assist the French resistance. Later betrayed by a member of the resistance, she would be executed in Dachau.
28. Harvard’s first black faculty member was a dentist. Dr. George Franklin Grant joined the Department of mechanical dentistry in 1871. Also an inventor, he patented the wooden golf tee. Previously, golfers carried around buckets of sand, placing their balls on little piles as they went.
29. Hermann Buhl was the first man to climb Nanga Parbat (9th tallest mountain in the world) pushed through the final 4300 feet alone by taking a high dose of amphetamines and drinking tea brewed from coca leaves. He then stood on a ledge overnight before heading down.
30. A man named Timothy Ray Brown was cured of HIV in 2007 with a bone marrow transplant from someone with genes resistant to HIV. He became the first person to ever be cured of HIV.
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15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
31Umbrella Usage
The first man in England to use an umbrella (in early 1750s), Jonas Hanway was pelted with insults and trash as men using umbrellas was taboo. In the minds of many Brits, umbrella usage was symptomatic of a weakness of character. The British also regarded umbrellas as too French.
32. In 1896, Alice Guy-Blache became the first female film director to direct a fantasy film. It is argued that it may even be the first fictional film.
33. The first man-made object to reach the stratosphere was a meter long shell fired from the Paris Gun, used by the Germans in World War 1 to bombard Paris from 80 miles away. The curvature of the earth had to be considered when calculating where the shells would land.
34. John Casor became the first man in colonial America to be declared slave for life in 1654-55. Till then, even captured Africans were indentured workers in law. Ironically, a former black indentured servant, Anthony Johnson, brought the case against Casor, who had worked on his plantation.
35. In 1922, scientists went to a hospital ward with comatose children, dying from diabetic keto-acidosis. They went from bed to bed injecting the kids with a new extract named insulin. As they injected the last comatose child, the first one injected began to awaken.
36Werner Forssmann
The first man to perform cardiac catheterization, did it on himself then walked downstairs to the radiology department to take the x-ray to prove you would not die. Werner Forssmann was fired, became a Nazi and then won the Nobel Prize.
37. The first Christmas party held at the US Embassy in the USSR featured three performing seals, who came into the room balancing a Christmas tree, a tray of glasses, and a bottle of champagne. Afterward, the seal’s trainer (quite drunk), passed out, and the seals galloped freely in the house.
38. Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish modern pentathlete, was the first athlete to ever be disqualified for doping in the Olympics. He drank ‘two beers’ to calm his nerves before pistol shooting, giving him an unfair advantage.
