Amazing Facts - First Facts

Amazing Facts - FIRST FACTS

• Persians first began using colored eggs to celebrate spring in 3,000 B.C. 13th century Macedonians were the first Christians on record to use colored eggs in Easter celebrations. Crusaders returning from the Middle East spread the custom of coloring eggs, and Europeans began to use them to celebrate Easter and other warm weather holidays.
• An American cow called Fawn was not afraid of flying. In May 1963, she was swept up by a tornado and carried half a mile, only to land safely in another farmer's field. Five years later, another tornado carried her over a bus. She survived this too, and lived to the ripe old age of 25.
• The greatest snow fall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
• The 1st feature-length animated film, released by Disney Studios in 1937, was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
• The town of Tidikelt in the Share Desert once went ten years without rainfall.
• The record for the biggest one day rainfall was set on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, on March 15, 1952, where 74 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.
• The word "earthling" was first found in print in 1593.
• The first man-made object to circle the earth was Sputnik I, launched in 1957.
• The coldest outdoor temperature ever recorded on earth was 127 below zero in Antarctica on August 24, 1960.
• Even when all the molecules in a single breath of air have been dispersed evenly in the earth's atmosphere, there will still be one or two of the same ones taken into the lungs with every subsequent breath. Every time you breathe in, you inhale one or two of the same molecules that you inhaled with the first breath you took as a baby.
• An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 sent the Mississippi River backwards.
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars Game.
• The first footprints at Grumman’s Chinese Theater (now Mann's Chinese Theater), were made by Norma Tallmadge in 1927. Legend has it that she accidentally stepped in wet concrete outside the building. Since then, over 180 stars have been immortalized, along with their hands and feet and even noses (Jimmy Durant).
• The Beatles were depicted in wax at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, in 1964, the first pop album stars to be honored.
• The crew of Apollo 11 who put the first man on the moon have the same initials as the first men on earth. Armstrong: Adam Aldine : Abel Collins : Cain
• The Apollo 11 plaque left on the Moon says, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. / WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND."
• The "countdown" (counting down from 10 for an event such as New-Years Day) was first used in a 1929 German silent film called "Die Frau I’m Monde" (The Girl in the Moon).
• Tatum O’Neal is the youngest Oscar winner not to receive a Special Award. O’Neal was just 10 years old when she won the Best Supporting Actress award for Paper Moon. Shirley Temple is the youngest person to win an Academy Award when she was given the Special Award for Outstanding Contribution in 1934 at the age of 6.
• Sunday, July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, Edwin Aldrin was the second. They were members of Apollo 11, and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. The Lunar Excursion Module was named the "Eagle." Michael Collins stayed onboard the mother ship, "Columbia."
• On February 6, 1971 the first golf ball was hit on the moon by Alan Shepard.
• Astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon with his left foot.
• In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.
• In 1959, the Soviet space probe "Luna Two" became the first manmade object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
• George Crum invented potato chips in 1853 at the Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. Crum was part Indian, part black, a former guide in the Adirondacks.
• Every time the moon's gravity causes a ten-foot tide at sea, all the continents on earth rise at least six inches.
• Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after March 21.
• December 1972 U.S. astronaut Eugene CERN an becomes the last person to set foot on the moon.
• After the sun, the closest star to Earth is 25,000,000,000,000 miles away.
• 1959's A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.
• The oldest works of art are pictures of animals found in caves in Spain and France. They have been dates as far back as 18,000 years ago.
• The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was formed in 1866.
• The 1st performance of Handel's "Messiah" was on April 13, 1742 at the New Music rooms in Fishable St., Dublin. Because of the demand for space, the men were asked not to wear their swords and the ladies not to wear hoped skirts.
• The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498. Bristles were taken from hogs at first, later from horses. The nylon bristles were developed in 1938 by DuPont.
• In the 1800s, the Chinese believed that strangling a man was less sever a punishment than beheading because the body would not be permanently disfigured.
• The first reference to a monetary prize in a horse race was offered by Richard I in 1195.
• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
• Police dogs were first used in 1816 in Scotland.
• Laika the dog was the first living thing which was sent to space.
• It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so that the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses its' forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
• Barbara Bush's book about her English Springer spaniel, Millie's book, was on the bestseller list for 29 weeks. Millie was the most popular "First Dog" in history.
• The first seeing-eye dog was presented to a blind person on April 25, 1938.
• Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.
• Dr. Guillotin merely proposed the machine that bears his name (which was rejected by the crown) and he never made a working model. The first working model was made by his assistant years later. When the machine attained infamy in the French Revolution, Dr.Guillotin protested its use and went to his grave claiming that the machine was unjustly named after him.
• Chinese made the first wheelbarrow.
• The Sumerians invented writing.
• The Sumerians, who lived in the Middle East, invented the wheel in about 3450 BC.
• It was the Romans who made the first popsicle. They took some ice and added flavors to it and then licked it.
• Thomas Crapper developed the flush toilet. In 1884, he simulated the materials a toilet would normally handle, to create "a super-flush which had completely cleared away: 10 apples, 1 flat sponge, 3 air vessels, Plumbers Smudge coated over the pan, 4 pieces of paper adhering closely to the soiled surface." A fantastic feat of flushing!
• The Industrial Revolution in Europe first saw the beginning of air pollution, which gradually became a major global problem.
• The first steam powered train was invented by Robert Stephenson. It was called the Rocket.
• The first pick-up truck in the world was made by Gottlieb Daimler in 1886. Gottlieb produced the world's first motorcycle in 1885.
• The first car with four wheels was made in France in 1901 by Panhard et LeVassor.
• pin bowling was made up in Germany during the Medieval ages Karl Benz invented the first gas powered car. The car had only three wheels.
• The first toy balloon, made of vulcanized rubber, was thought of by someone in the J.G.Ingram company in London, England in 1847.
• The first metal bicycle was called the High-Wheel or Penny Farthing. People had a hard time keeping their balance on this type of bicycle.
• The first bicycle that was made in 1817 by Baron von Drais didn't have any pedals.
• The Wright Brothers invented one of the first airplanes. It was called the Kitty Hawk.
• The first black surgeon to do open heart surgery was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. In 1893, he saved a man who was knifed by opening his chest and sewing together the wound, which was only a fraction of an inch from his heart. He was one of the first to do this. He accomplished this without any modern medical devices, such as x-rays.
• The first animal sent up to outer space was a dog.
• JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes.
• The first kind of PENCIL was a bunch of GRAPHITE sticks held together by string. Then someone decided it would be better to push the graphite into the inside of a hollow wooden stick.