50 Fun Facts About Famous Firsts

Who was the first human to travel into space, in April 1961?

His single orbit aboard Vostok 1 was his only spaceflight.

How long did Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight last?

He later served as backup for the Soyuz 1 flight that killed his friend Vladimir Komarov.

Who was the first woman in space?

She flew a solo mission on Vostok 6 in June 1963.

Who was the first American in space?

He named his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 and later hit golf balls on the Moon during Apollo 14.

Who was the first American woman in space?

At 32 she was also the youngest American to fly, on the shuttle mission STS-7 in 1983.

The first person to walk on the Moon commanded which mission?

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent two and a half hours outside the lunar module Eagle.

What was the first artificial Earth satellite?

The Soviet Union launched it on 4 October 1957 from what is now Baikonur.

Laika, the first animal to orbit the Earth, was what kind of animal?

The Moscow stray flew on Sputnik 2 in November 1957 and died of overheating within hours.

On what date did the Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained powered flight?

It happened four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now Kill Devil Hills.

Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight was the first solo crossing of the Atlantic between which two cities?

He flew the Spirit of St. Louis alone for over 33 hours to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

In what year did Amelia Earhart become the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic?

She had crossed as a passenger in 1928 and vanished over the Pacific in 1937.

Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot, had to train in which country?

No US school would take her, so she earned her licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 1921.

Who led the first party to reach the South Pole in December 1911?

The Norwegian had earlier led the first successful transit of a fabled Arctic sea route.

Who accompanied Peary on the 1909 North Pole expedition and later said he got there first?

Peary had hired him as a valet in 1887 and took him on seven Arctic voyages.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first confirmed to summit Everest on which date?

They were part of the ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt.

Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb Everest and the first to complete which challenge?

She also led annual climbs of Mount Fuji for young people affected by the 2011 earthquake.

Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile at which track?

Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher paced him on 6 May 1954.

How long did Bannister's mile record last before John Landy broke it?

Landy ran 3:57 in Turku, Finland, on 21 June 1954.

Who was awarded the first US patent for the telephone in March 1876?

He considered it an intrusion on his real work and refused to have one in his study.

Bertha Benz made the first long-distance drive in a motor car in 1888, covering roughly how far?

She invented brake lining along the way and won the Patent-Motorwagen its first sales.

Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen, considered the first practical modern car, dates from which year?

He patented it in 1886 and drove it publicly the same year.

Louise Brown, the first baby born through IVF, was born in 1978 in which English town?

The technique was developed by Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy.

Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

She remains the only person to win in two different sciences, physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.

Who was the first woman in the world to be elected prime minister, in 1960?

She led Sri Lanka three times and also became the first woman to chair the Non-Aligned Movement.

Who was the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court?

Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1981 and she served until 2006.

Who was the first woman to serve in a US presidential cabinet?

She was Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor for his entire presidency.

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the US Congress in 1916, represented which state?

In 1941 she was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan.

How many tie-breaking Senate votes did Kamala Harris cast as vice president, a record?

They included votes to pass the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Before the US presidency, Barack Obama was the first Black president of which institution?

The election made national news and led to the book deal that became his memoir.

Jackie Robinson broke MLB's colour line playing which position for the Brooklyn Dodgers?

He debuted on 15 April 1947 and won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award.

Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar for which film?

She could not attend the Atlanta premiere because the theatre was whites-only.

Sidney Poitier became the first Black actor to win the Best Actor Oscar for which film?

He was also the first Bahamian to win it, in 1964.

Halle Berry won the Best Actress Oscar for which film?

She played a struggling widow.

Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for which film?

She beat her ex-husband James Cameron and Avatar.

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in which year?

Beloved had won her the Pulitzer five years earlier.

Nellie Bly's record-breaking 1889 trip around the world took how many days?

She was emulating Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg and beat him by eight days.

Where did Nellie Bly go undercover for her famous exposé of asylum conditions?

She feigned insanity to get committed for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

Charles Blondin first crossed the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope in which year?

He repeated it blindfolded, on stilts, in a sack, pushing a wheelbarrow and carrying his manager.

The schoolteacher who first survived Niagara Falls in a barrel did it on which birthday?

Annie Edson Taylor hoped the stunt would fund her old age.

Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman in space, died aboard which shuttle in 2003?

The orbiter disintegrated on re-entry from damage sustained at liftoff.

The first American woman in space flew both her missions on which shuttle?

STS-7 in 1983 and STS-41-G in 1984.

What did the Soviet Union's first satellite transmit that let people around the world track it?

Temperature and pressure readings were encoded in the length of the beeps.

The first man to reach the South Pole had earlier led the first transit of which waterway?

He did it between 1903 and 1906 in the sloop Gjøa.

Which Mercury Seven astronaut became the oldest person to walk on the Moon, at 47?

He commanded Apollo 14 in 1971 after being grounded for years by an inner-ear disorder.

How many Nobel Prizes has the Curie family won in total?

Marie and Pierre were the first married couple to win one, and their daughter Irène followed.

Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to hold which job at Random House?

Her own first novel, The Bluest Eye, came out in 1970.

Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in December 1967 in which city?

Patient Louis Washkansky received the heart of accident victim Denise Darvall and lived 18 days before pneumonia, worsened by anti-rejection drugs, killed him.

How long did Gertrude Ederle take in 1926 to become the first woman to swim the English Channel?

She beat the existing men's record by nearly two hours, and the press dubbed her 'Queen of the Waves'.

The first Winter Olympic Games were held in 1924 in which French resort?

Staged as an 'International Winter Sports Week', the event was only retrospectively declared the first Winter Olympics by the IOC.

Which French inventor produced the oldest surviving camera photograph, using bitumen in the 1820s?

The image was thought lost until photography historians Helmut and Alison Gernsheim tracked it down in 1952.