First people to scale K2, the world's second-highest peak: Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni of the party led by Ardito Desio and Mario Puchoz. July 29, 1954
First person in flight: Bartolomeu de Gusmão in a balloon filled with heated air at the hall of the Casa da India in Lisbon. August 8, 1709. (However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese speaking community, in particular the FAI.)
First to fly over the North Pole (disputed): On May 9, 1926, Americans Richard E. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed a successful flight over the North Pole in a Fokker F-VII Tri-motor called the Josephine Ford. This claim, widely accepted at first, has been credibly challenged since.
First confirmed expedition to reach the North Pole without resupply: Will Steger International Polar Expedition. May 1, 1986. Team members were: Paul Schurke, Brent Boddy, Richard Weber, Geoff Carroll, Ann Bancroft and a team of 21 dogs. Brent Boddy & Richard Weber became the first Canadians to reach the North Pole on foot while Ann Bancroft became the first woman to trek to the Pole.
First surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean on skis: Polar Bridge expedition, 1988, the Soviet-Canadian transpolar ski expedition that crossed 1800 kilometres of Arctic Ocean from Northern Siberia to Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve in Canada, via the North Pole. First surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean on skis. Richard Weber (Canadian team leader) became the first person to reach the North Pole from both sides of the Arctic Ocean.
First hot air balloon flight launched from the North Pole: Global Concern Expedition lead by Richard Weber. 1989
First attempt to journey to the North Pole and return using only human resources: 1992 Weber Malakhov Expedition. Richard Weber and Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov departed from Ward Hunt on March 13. Eighty-five days later, on June 14, they reached 89 degrees 39. With only 39 kilometers short of the Pole, they had to make the decision to turn back if they wanted to have any hope of returning to Ward Hunt. On June 21, due to the lack of ice, they were picked up by an airplane and brought back to safety.
First commercial North Pole Expedition: Weber Malakhov North Pole Dash.1993 Richard Weber and Dr. Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov pioneered the first commercial North Pole expedition. Today numerous companies take more than 100 people annually to the Pole.
First confirmed journey to the North Pole and return using only human resources: 1995 Weber Malakhov Expedition. Richard Weber and Dr. Mikhail (Misha) Malakhov became the first to reach the North Pole and return to their starting point on land (Ward Hunt, Canada), with no outside help, no dogs, air planes, or re-supplies. They departed Ward Hunt on February 14 and reached the Pole eighty one days later, on May 12. On June 15, they were back at Ward Hunt establishing a record of 108 days for the longest unsupported polar journey. They are the only people to have reached the Pole four times.
First time that an all women group has reached the pole from a Russian based departure: Women Quest 2001 guided by Josée Auclair. April 2001.
First expedition to reach the North Pole on snowshoes exclusively: April 26, 2006 North Pole Classic. Richard Weber guided Conrad Dickinson to the North Pole with no re-supplies. This was Richard Weber?s fifth full North Pole expedition. He has trekked to the North Pole more than anyone in history.
On 21 February2007 HRH Prince Edward announced the first British Army Expedition the Geographic North Pole, to be led by Captain Andrew Cooney (the youngest person to walk to the South Pole) www.northpole08.com.
First expedition to reach the Magnetic North Pole by automobile: Jeremy Clarkson and James May, (2007) as shown on a special episode of BBC's Top Gear where the two presenters reached the Pole in a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, specially modified by Arctic Trucks in Iceland. The two were accompanied by seven others, including the camera and sound crew, two Icelandic mechanics (Hjalti Hjaltason and Haraldur Pétursson), and a soldier of unstated nationality in two other specially modified vehicles.
First sound recording: A part of Au Clair de la Lune, recorded by Leon Scott in 1860. Note that there was neither any contemporary technology nor intention to play the recorded sound.
First homo sapiens: the Omo Remains include Omo I, the earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens (idaltu), dated to around 190,000 years ago.http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00053DFE-C0B7-1213-80B783414B7F0000 This is considerably older than the 160,000-year-old Herto remains, which had been thought to be the earliest humans, and suggests that, if humans did originate in Africa as is currently thought, they did not expand from there for much longer than previously thought.
First person to have both a mother and father who have travelled into space: Elena Andrianovna, daughter of Valentina Tereshkova and Andriyan Nikolayev.
First artificial pacemaker implant into a human: By a Swedish team using a pacemaker designed by Rune Elmqvist working under the direction of Åke Senning, 1958. The patient was Arne Larsson.
First heart transplant: First attempted by James Hardy, but the lack of a human donor forced him to transplant a chimpanzee heart instead, which failed shortly after. The first successful transplant was performed by Christiaan Barnard on December 3, 1967.
First artificial pacemaker implant into an infant: Into Jason A. Haines when he was 16 hours old, July 26, 1974.
First person to drive an automobile across the US in winter and from New York City to Paris France winning The Great Auto Race 22,000 mile course in 169 days/13,341 miles driven: George Schuster, (1908)
First football player to miss a penalty shootout: Dennis Law, in the semi-finals of the Watney Cup, England (1970)
First major football tournament to be settled by a penalty shootout - UEFA European Football Championship 1976, Czechoslovakia vs. West Germany (a penalty score of 5-3 respectively)
First football World Cup match to be decided by a penalty shootout: the 1982 semi-finals between West Germany and France (a penalty score of 5-4 respectively)
First football World Cup final match to be decided by a penalty shootout: 1994 final between Brazil and Italy, at Pasadena, California (a penalty score of 3-2 respectively).
First translator of an English formal equivalence of the Ancient Hebrew Bible: "THIS REPORT: The Hebrew/Phoenician History called the Bible"[1], by Rabbi Howshua Amariel.
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