FIRST-LAST FACTS

1.  The first Valentine's Day card was sent by the imprisoned Duke of Orlean to his wife in 1415.
2.  Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine's Day candy box in the late 1800s.
3.  The first novel, called The story of Genji, was written in 1007 by Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu.
4.  The first company that Bill Gates ever ran created machines that would record the number of cars passing a given point on a street.
5.  The first personal computer was called the Altair and was made by a company called MITS in 1974. It came in a kit and had to be assembled by the user.
6.  The Hollywood sign was first erected in 1923. Conceived as a real estate ad, it originally read Hollywoodland.
7.  The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago.
8.  26 December, Boxing day, was traditionally known as St. Stephen's Day, after the first Christian martyr.
9.  The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.
10.  Great Britain was the first country to issue postage stamps, and they're the only nation today that doesn't use a national name on their stamps.
11.  The Chinese first invented the system of zoos, and called them Parks of Intelligence.
12.  The first striptease dance was performed in Paris, France on March 13, 1894.
13.  The first time the color khaki was used for uniforms in a war was in 1880, during the Afghan War.
14.  Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring.



15.  The term skyscraper was first used in 1888, to describe 11-story building.
16.  Benjamin Franklin was America's first newspaper cartoonist.
17.  When tennis was first invented in 1874, it was called sphairistike.
18.  When volleyball was first invented in 1895, it was called mintonette.
19.  The first animal in space was a female dog named "Laika".
20.  The first hard drive available for the Apple II had a capacity of 5 Megabytes.
21.  China was the first country to introduce paper money (in 812).
22.  The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.
23.  The first Academy Awards (or Oscar's) were presented on 16 May 1929.
24.  Australia's first police force was a band of 12 of the most well behaved Convicts.
25.  In 1937, the first postage stamp to commemorate Christmas was issued in Austria.
26.  The first recorded reference to cricket dates back to 1272.
27.  The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com in Mar 85.
28.  The first music video was aired on August 1, 1981 "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Bugles on MTV.
29.  The first police force was established in Paris 1667.
30.  The first product to have a UPC bar code on its packaging was Wrigley's gum.
31.  France became the first reigning World Cup champions who fail to win a match.
32.  Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversiary of Canada's independence.
33.  The first city in modern history to reach 1 million people was London in 1811.
34.  Toronto was the first city in the world with a computerized traffic signal system.
35.  King Charles VII, assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed.
36.  The value of "pi" was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.
37.  The World's first university was established in Takshila, India in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects.
38.  The first place in the western world to give women the right to vote was an island known as "Man".
39.  The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo

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