300 Firsts

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Awards


First Nobel prize winner for literature
Sully Prudhomme, France (1901)

First Nobel prize winner for peace
Jean Henri Dunant, Switzerland & Frederic Passy, France (1901)

First Nobel prize winner for economics
Ragnar Frisch, Norway & Jan Tinbergen, Netherlands (1969)

First person to win two Nobel Prizes
Marie Sklodowska Curie ( first in Physics, 1903 and the second in Chemistry, 1911)

First black to receive the Nobel Peace prize
Ralph Bunche(1950)

First Indian to win Nobel Prize in literature
Rabindranath Tagore. He was also the first Asian to get the prize (1913)

First Indian to win Booker Prize
Arundhati Roy. For ‘The Good of small things’ (1997)

First Indians to win Bharat Ratna
Dr.S.Rahakrishnan, C.Rajagopalachari, and Dr. C.V. Raman (1954)

First woman Nobel prize winner
Marie Sklodowska Curie, Physics. She is the first to win Physics Nobel (1903).

First woman Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry
Marie Sklodowska Curie (1911)

First woman to win the Jnanpith
Ashapurna Devi (1976)

First woman to receive Bharat Ratna
Indira Gandhi (1971)

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Awards

First woman mother and daughter to win Nobel prize
Marie Sklodowska Curie 91903) and daughter Irene Joliot Curie (1935)

First woman Nobel prize winner for peace
Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (1905)

First woman Nobel Prize winner for literature
Selma Ottila Lovisa Lagerlof (1909)

First woman from India to win a Nobel Prize
Mother Teresa, Peace Prize (1979)

First American woman to win the Nobel prize for peace
Jane Addams, social worker (1931)

First Black woman to win the Nobel prize for literature
Toni Morrison (1993)

First Muslim woman to win the Nobel prize
Shrine Ebadi (2003)

First Black woman to win a Pulitzer prize
Gwendolyn Brooks (1950)

Woman selected as time magazine’s “Man of the Year”
Wallis Warfield Simpson (1936)

First Black woman to win an Oscar for best actress
Halle Berry (2002)

First India woman to win a Pulitzer Prize
Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)

First woman Pulitzer winner for fiction
Edith Wharton, American novelist for “The Age of innocence” (1921)

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Education


First education minister of free India
Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad

First women’s university in India
Indian women’s university, Pune. Now this is known as SNDP women’s university. Mumbai (1916)

First women’s college in India
Bethune college, Calcutta (1879)

First woman law graduate in India
Cornelia Sorabji, Calcutta (1894)

First deaf and dumb woman to be graduate
Helen Keller, Radcliffe college (1904)

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Cinema

First Indian to win Dadasaheb Phalke Award
Devika Rani (1970)

First talkie movie in the world
“The Jazz Singer” (1927)

First Oscar winner for the Best actor
Emil Jannings(192

First black actor to win an Oscar in a major category
Sidney Poitier. It was for his role in the film, “Lilies of the Field” (1964)

First Indian Oscar winner
Bhanu Athaiya, for best costume design for the film ‘Gandhi’ (1982)

First Indian Oscar nomination for best Foreign language film
Mother India (1957)

First Oscar winner for best actress
Janet Gaynor, for her total work (192

First black actress to win an Oscar
Hattie McDaniel. She won the best supporting actress award for her rile as Mammy in “Gone with the Wind” (1939)

First Lady of the Indian Screen
Devika Rani Roerich

First American woman film director
Alice Guy Blache (1896)

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Medicine

First direct transfusion of blood performed by
Richard Lower, English Physician and physiologist (1666)

First person to be executed by the guillotine
Nicolas J. Pelletier (1792)

First sex-change operation in the world
George (Christine) Jorgenson (1952)

First human heat transplant was performed by
Dr. Christian Barnard (1967)

First human heart transplant recipient
Louis Washkansky. He lived only 18 days with the new heart (1967)

First recipient of a permanent artificial heart
Barney Clark (1982)

First artificial pacemaker implant into a human
By a Swedish team using a pacemaker designed by Rune Elmqvist. The patient was Arne L arson (195

First test tube baby
Louis Brown. In Lancastershire, England. Patrick Christopher Steptoe, English obstetrician, together with Robert Edwards, biologist, succeeded in this first human in vitro fertilization (197

First Indian test tube baby
Harsha, at KEM hospital Mumbai. Indira Hinduja was the doctor (1986)

Parkinson’s disease was first described by
James Parkinson, British neurologist (1817)


Hodgkin’s disease was first recognized by
Thomas Hodgkin, English physician. He was also the first person to stress the importance of post mortem (1832)

DNA finger printing was first developed by
Prof.Alec Jeffreys, UK (1984)

First official recognition of AIDS in the world
Centers for disease control issued a press release describing five cases in Los Angeles, USA (1981)

First to clone an AIDS virus and work out its anatomy
Chinese American Flossie Wong Staal (1985)


To qualify as a medical doctor in Europe
Dr.Maria Montessori, University of Rome, Italy (1896)

First Indian Lady doctor
Kadambani Ganguly (1896)

First woman to receive medical degree in US
Elizabeth Blackwell (1849)

Black woman to study and work as a professionally trained nurse
Mary Eliza Mahoney (1879)

First woman to receive an artificial heart (Jarvik VII)
Mary Lund (1986)


First woman president of the World Health Assembly of WHO
Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, India (1950)

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Literature, Media

The first magazine printed in the world
‘Journal of the Learned’ (Journal des Scavans) published in Paris (1665)

Inventor of the first sign language alphabet for the use of the deaf
George Dalgarno, Scotish school teacher (1680)

The first alpbhabetical encyclopedia
Technical Lexicon. Complied by John Harris (1704)

First American novel
The power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown(1789)

First incident of a murder shown live on television
Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald (1963)

First dictionary in the world
‘Explaining complied by Hsew Shen (C 100 AD)

First Thesaurus in the world
Chinese ‘Literary Aproximater’ (C 800 BC)

First Encyclopaedia in the world
‘Antiquities Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (47 BC)

First daily newspaper in the world
The Daily News (Acta Diurna) This is the earliest known handeritten Daily Newspaper in the world published in Rome (1st BC)

First printed book in the world
Diamond Sutra. This Chinese book in Buddhist printed book in the world (868 AD)

First novel in the world
Cyropaedia, historical Greek novel written in Corinth about the life of Cyrus (360 BC)

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Government


First US president
George Washington, He is the only unanimously elected US president (1789)

First US president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C –
Thomas Jefferson (1801)

First US president to die in office
William Henry Harrison. He also has the shortest term in office, 32 days (1841)

First US president to be assassinated
Abraham Lincoln. He is also the first president from the republican party (1865)

First and only US president to resign from office
Richard Nixon (1974

First and only US president to win election to nonconsecutive terms
Grover Cleveland. He Is also the first US president married inside the white house in 1886 (1892)

First US president to reside in the white house
John Adams. He was the first vice president and the second president (1797)

First US president to have a telephone in the white house
Rutherford B.Hayes

First and only bachelor to be elected US president
James Buchanan

First US president to make a radio broadcast
Calvin Coolidge

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Government

First US president to be a Rhodes Scholar
Bill Clinton

First US vice president to assume presidency upon the death of the president
John Tyler (1841)

First unelected US vice president to become president
Gerald R.Ford (1974)

First American Indian to become a US Senator
Charles Curtis (1907)

First openly gay U.S congressperson
Barney Frank (1981)

First Black to become US secretary of state
Colin Powell

First black secretary general of united nations
Trygve Lie, Norway (1946)

First prime minister of UK
Robert Walpole (1721)

First English Monarch to live in Bucking Ham Palace
Queen Victoria (1837)

First British Monarch to have a televised coronation
Elizabeth II (1953)

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Government

First prime minister of Canada
Sir John Alexander Mcdonald (1867)

First Tsar of Russia
Ivan IV, the Terrible (1547)

First reigning queen of England
Queen of Mary I (Bloody Mary) (1553)

First Indian prime minister to be voted out of office
Indira Gandhi, when the Indian National congress lost to the Janata Party(1977)

First Non congress government in India
Janata party government with Morarji Desai as the prime minister (1977-1979)

First emperor of Rome
Augustus (27 BC)

First prime minister of Canada
Sir John A. Macdonald (1867)

First black president of South Africa
Nelson Mandela (1994)

First country to implement ‘right to vote’ for women (female suffrage)
New Zealand (1893)

First great woman in record history
Hatshepsut (1479 BC)

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Government



First black woman in US Seneate
Carol Elizabeth Modeley Braun, lllonois (1992)

First woman nominated for president of the US by a major political party
Margaret Chase Smith, Maine, at the republican national convention in San Francisco (1964)

World’s first woman prime minister
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, prime minister of Sri Lanka. She is the first woman to be elected the head of state (1960)

First woman president in the world
Isabel Peron, Argentina (1974)

First democratically elected woman head if the state
Vigdls FinnbogadUttir, President of Iceland (1980

First woman prime minister of Israel
Golda Meir. She is the first Jewish woman prime minister (1964)

First woman president of the Philippines
Corazon Aquino. She is the first Philippine president not to seek a second term (1986)

First woman prime minister of Canada
Kim Campbell (1993)

First woman chancellor of Germany
Dr. Angela Merkel (2005)

First woman prime minister of India
Indira Gandhi (1996)