Unusual Firsts

Since this is the first entry in this blog, I decided to post some "unusual firsts" I found on trivia-library.com:
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THE FIRST STUDENT PROTEST IN THE U.S.
Henry David Thoreau's grandfather. Asa Dunbar, set the pattern for American student rebellions over 200 years ago. In 1766 he protested against the quality of Harvard College food with the slogan "Behold, our butter stinketh!" After the faculty condemned him for "the sin of insubordination," Dunbar and his followers conducted an eat-out. They breakfasted off campus.
THE FIRST USE OF TEMPORARY INSANITY AS A DEFENSE IN THE U.S.
On Feb. 25, 1859, Congressman Daniel Sickles learned that his wife had been having an affair with Philip Key, son of Francis Scott Key who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner." Two days later the enraged Sickles confronted Key and shot him twice, killing him. During the trial Attorney James T. Brady defended his client with the plea of "temporary insanity." Sickles was acquitted and later became a distinguished Union general in the Civil War.
THE FIRST AMERICAN ACCIDENT INSURANCE POLICY
Travelers Insurance Co. sold the nation's first accident insurance policy in 1864 to James Bolter of Hartford, Conn. The $1,000 policy covered only the time Bolter spent walking from the post office to his home on Buckingham Street. The premium was 2 Cent.
THE FIRST USE OF A CABLEGRAM TO CAPTURE A MURDERER
In April, 1885, Hugh Brooks, the son of a prosperous English merchant, registered at the elegant Southern Hotel in St. Louis, Mo. While staying there, he became a good friend of C. Arthur Preller, a wealthy compatriot. A few days after Brooks left St. Louis for New Zealand, police discovered Preller's body stuffed inside a trunk in his hotel room. Suspecting Brooks, Police Chief Larry Harrigan sent a 133-word wire costing $400 to the U.S. consul in Auckland. When Brooks arrived there, officials seized him and returned him to the U.S. in irons. Lawyers at the trial proved that Brooks, despite his family background, had little money, and had killed Preller in order to steal $600 from him. Brooks was hanged at the St. Louis Four Courts Jail in 1888, but before he died, he quipped, "America was certainly not the land of opportunity for me."
THE FIRST GIDEON BIBLE
Members of Gideons International, a laymen's organization formed in 1899, placed its first Bible in a room at the Superior Hotel in Iron Mountain, Mont., on Nov. 10, 1908. Since then, they have been responsible for distributing Bibles to prisons, hospitals, and schools, as well as motels and hotels.
THE FIRST AIRLINE MEALS
Britain's Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals when it offered lunch boxes on its London-to-Paris flight on Oct. 11, 1919.
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEON ADVERTISEMENT
The first neon-tube advertising sign in the U.S. appeared on the marquee of the Cosmopolitan Theater in New York City in July, 1923. It announced Marion Davies in the leading role of Little Old New York. A patent for the neon lighting was granted to French physicist and chemist Georges Claude.
THE FIRST IN-FLIGHT MOVIES
During an Imperial Airways flight to the Continent in April, 1925, the first in-flight movie, First National's production of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, was featured. Regular in-flight movies began on July 19, 1961, with the showing of By Love Possessed on a TWA flight between New York and Los Angeles.
THE FIRST FOOD STAMPS
On May 29, 1961, Chloe and Alderson Muncy, along with 13 of their 15 children, went to Welch, W. Va., to receive the nation's first food stamps from Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman. Accompanied by reporters and television crews, the Muncys proceeded to a grocery store after receiving $95 worth of stamps. They finished their shopping only after the Hale family, the country's second recipient of food stamps and the first family to pay for the stamps, had been to the checkout counter before them. Sponsored by the Kennedy administration, the food stamp program grew out of the shock that JFK experienced when campaigning in poverty-stricken areas of West Virginia in 1960.
THE FIRST X-RATED MOVIE IN CHINA
As a sign of a more tolerant intellectual climate, the first X-rated movie allowed inside the People's Republic of China was shown throughout the country in 1978. The Japanese-made film depicted the struggles of a young girl sold into prostitution by her parents. The nation's most respected cultural journal defended the movie, explaining that it had "enlightened and educated" its audiences by expanding the narrow view of morality imposed by Mao's wife and other members of the notorious "Gang of Four."
THE FIRST NUNS TO BE A U.S. AIR FORCE CAPTAIN AND A U.S. MAYOR
Mary Hargrafen, also known as Sister Mary Carl, was the first nun to become a captain in the U.S. Air Force. She was attached to the 2nd Air Medical Evacuation Squadron at Rhine-Main Air Base in West Germany in March, 1978. A member of the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, Ia., Sister Mary Carl turned over most of her annual $20,000 salary to her convent. In 1980 Dubuque also had the distinction of electing the first nun as mayor of an American city--Sister Carol Farrell.
THE FIRST ARTIFICIAL BLOOD TRANSFUSION IN THE U.S.
A spokesman for the University of Minnesota Hospital announced on Nov. 20, 1979, that one of its doctors, Dr. Robert Anderson, had been the first in the country to give a patient a transfusion of artificial blood. The patient suffered a severe loss of blood after having undergone surgery for vascular disease. As a Jehovah's Witness, he refused on religious grounds to receive a transfusion of real blood, so the doctor injected a milky blood substitute called Fluosol, which was developed and tested in Japan.
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Got an unusaual fact or oddity? eMail it to Joey Morris' Bizzare Bazaar at shaotlinc@hotmail.com