First Post

This being the first post on my new blog "L" is for "list," I think it appropriate to begin with a list of firsts.

1.- First man to die in a plane crash: Lt. Thomas Etholen Selfridge.

Selfridge was a Dirigible pilot for the Army and died on September 17, 1908, when the Wright Flyer he was riding in suffered a propeller failure and plunged to the ground. The plane was being piloted by Orville Wright as part of a demonstration for the Army of the new flying machine's capabilities and its potential military value. Orville Wright, himself, was gravely wounded in the accident. (Wikipedia)


2.- The first detective story: "Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Edgar Alan Poe's tale describing a pair of mysterious murders in Paris, and the man who sets out to solve them, introduces many of the literary devices that will form the stock and trade of detective fiction for years to come, including (as per Wikipedia) "model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it." The story is also notable for it's startling (if somewhat implausible) twist ending.


3.- The first president to live in the White House: John Adams.

The building was completed and first occupied by the President in the year 1800. (Museumspot)


4.- The first postage stamp: The Penny Black

Invented by an English schoolmaster in 1837, the first adhesive postage stamps when into circulation in England in 1840 (about). While they are rare, they are neither the rarest nor most valuable of postage stamps, indeed there were some 68 million Penny Black's produced throughout the stamp's history. The honor of most valuable stamp is variously attributed to the Treskillin Yellow, or the British Guiana 1 Cent Magenta.




5.- The first chess computer: The Turk, 1770

Constructed by Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd, The Turk was an anthropomorphic automaton that played a strong game of chess and travelled throughout Europe for decades stunning audiences and opponents alike until it was revealed, in the early 19th century, to be little more than an elaborate hoax. (Wikipedia)

The first bona-fide chess computer was programmed by Alan Turing in 1950.


6.- First potato chip: August 24, 1853, Sarasota Springs NY.

So the story goes: chef George Crum invented potato chip when, as a joke, he very thinly sliced and fried a potato for a customer who used to complain about his potatoes being too thick. The customer unexpectedly liked the new food and before too long potato chips became a staple of the American snack food industry.


7.- First ship sunk by a submarine: USS Housatonic, February 17, 1864

The USS Housatonic was the victim of a submarine attack by the Confederate submarine the H.L. Hunley during the American civil war. While most crew members survived, three men did lose their lives to the attack. The Hunley was not so lucky, however. Soon after the encounter, on its way back to base, the small confederate submergible took on water in rough seas and sunk, killing all on board. Incredibly, this was not the first time that the Hunley had sunk, taking most or all its crew-members to a watery grave.

A plan of the H.L. Hunley

8.- The first portable computer: The Osborne 1, April 1981

Long before laptop computers became a staple of businessmen and college students the world over, the Obsorne Computer corporation released a revolutionary, luggable computer running the CP/M operating system. Though earlier systems had claimed to be portable, the Osborne I was the first to feature a built-in battery and a keyboard that folded up to protect the screen while in transit, both staple features of contemporary laptops. The basic design of the Osborne I would be emulated by machines such as the Compaq Portable, which ran the MSDOS operating system that was the precursor to Windows, and the Commodore SX4 home computer, which was essentially a portable version of the popular Commodore 64.

The Obsorne I, the Compaq portable and the Commodore SX4

9.- The first African-American Millionaire: Madam C. J. Walker (b. 1867 - 1919)

Growing up in a house with no indoor plumbing, Walker suffered from diseases of the scalp that nearly resulted in baldness. These personal circumstances inspired her to develop a line of hair care products that would eventually produce enough income that she became the first African American and the first American woman (of any race) to become a self-made millionaire.

10.- The first manmade object to break the sound barrier: The whip

While there is an immediate temptation to name the Bell X1 supersonic plane that carried pilot Chuck Yaeger on the first manned supersonic flight, one should not forget that as far as man made objects are concerned, both the supersonic German V2 rocket of World War II and, indeed, an ordinary bullet fired from a rifle can move at a rate faster than the speed of sound. But the first manmade object to exceed 767 miles per hour is a whip, whose cracking sound is actually caused by a small sonic boom.