59 Firsts In History Which Laid The Foundation For Further Achievements

Ada Lovelace was not just the first female programmer but also the first programmer of any gender. Brilliant mathematician Ada Lovelace, born in England, is known for creating the world's first machine algorithm for a primitive computer. In 1843, her achievement was widely published in British papers.

One Nobel Prize might seem like a remarkable career achievement, but two of these prestigious honors? Marie Curie, a well-known scientist, became the first person of any gender to win a pair of Nobel Awards when she took home the Chemistry award in 1911 and the Physics prize in 1903, respectively.

It took some creativity for Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to be able to take the first photograph in 1826. The blurry black-and-white image is allegedly the scene from his window, albeit it is debatable how recognizable the image is. It seems like a magic trick how the first picture got taken, using asphalt and a pewter plate.

Johannes Gutenberg's printing press allowed authors to write and distribute the same book rather quickly. The first book released with the printing press was (no wonder) the Bible. To this day, the legacy made by this printing press is still felt in the current way we distribute paperback books.

Sadly, hit-and-run incidents have become one of the worst side effects of car transportation. On August 17, 1896, Bridget Driscoll became the first person to get hit by a moving car and, sadly, passed away from her injuries. The car she got hit by was moving at just four miles per hour. People hoped that this type of accident wouldn't happen in the future.

As far as peaks go, Mount Everest is the most challenging. Luckily, its summit was reached more than once. Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest for the first time on May 29, 1953. However, Tenzing Norgay, his sherpa, deserves credit for hauling the cargo for other people while also reaching the top of the mountain.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, they captured people's imaginations and left them in amazement. With "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong invented one of the earliest viral memes. Two jobs got done in one trip.

Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian adventurer, became the first person to reach both poles of the world when he went to the South Pole in 1911 and the North Pole in 1926. He broke world records, which is good, but the bad news is that Santa Claus was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was on a holiday of some kind?

While there are a lot of female leaders in the modern day, they were a rare sight just a few decades ago. The honor goes to Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland, who became the first female president in the world on June 29, 1980. Her 16-year tenure made her the longest-serving official female president.

When it comes to magical creations, the Harry Potter book and movie franchise might be the one that comes first to mind. J.K. Rowling is the writer behind many famous characters, including the one that cannot be named. These many years of writing earned the author a lot of money and made her the first writer to gross $1 billion from written books.

Creating a map would be an early goal for humanity because people have been getting lost since they could walk. Yet, the first globe atlas wasn't available to those with a poor sense of direction until 1570. Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish cartographer, developed the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the globe) and published it in a book of 53 pages.

You might not know this, but the Higgs boson is the fundamental particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. Because of its unusual characteristics and theoretical significance, the "god particle" was frequently referred to as such by physicists. Nevertheless, this was just a theory until scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider found the first particle on July 4, 2012.

It's very easy to get caught up in viewing YouTube videos when so much content is available on the platform. But have you ever watched the first video to get posted on YouTube? Me at the Zoo went online on April 23, 2005. In it, YouTube co-creator, Jawed Karim, spends 19 seconds explaining why elephants have long trunks.

The great soccer player Pelé became the first and probably only player to achieve 1,000 or more goals in competitive play when he scored his 1,000th on November 19, 1969. The Brazilian scored 1,281 goals throughout his career and became the Athlete of the Century in 1999.

Sarah Breedlove, a businesswoman, developed a line of hair care products specifically for African women experiencing hair loss. Walker gained notoriety as a philanthropist due to her financial success, providing scholarships for female students at the Tuskegee Institute and sponsoring social services for migrants, orphans, and the elderly.

Before March 1, 1872, Yellowstone was a beautiful piece of land under limited protection from the federal government. On March 1, 1872, Yellowstone became a national park, all thanks to US president Ulysses S. Grant. Being the first national park, it might be one of the most beautiful pieces of land on the North American continent. 

Solar flares are the things that might cause an apocalypse here on Earth. The first solar flare that people detected hit us on September 1, 1859. Richard Carrington, a British astronomer, was the person who saw it and recorded it in his journals. Moreover, it is the strongest solar flare ever observed.

The problem with flying is that humans don’t have wings, and we must be creative in order to lift ourselves off the ground. Marquis d'Arlandes and Pilatre de Rozier flew in a hot-air balloon on November 21, 1783, making history as the first people to take to the skies. Their 20-minute Parisian sky flight sparked generations of inventions, daydreams, and jigsaw puzzles.

Flying was seen more as a daredevil sport a century ago. Amelia Earhart became the first female pilot to complete a solo transatlantic trip on May 21, 1932, solidifying her spot on the list of daredevil adrenaline addicts. The United States Congress presented her with a Distinguished Flying Cross.

As the story goes, a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran the first marathon in 490 BC. He made the 25-mile trek from the Marathon fight to Athens to announce Greece's victory when he collapsed from weariness. Modern runners were motivated to run their 25-mile races due to the narrative.