Firsts (2 page)

Few seem to agree on the first 24-hour store, except to say that a store by definition offers services and/or goods in a retail environment. In the summer of 1876, Al Swearingen opened the Gem Saloon and Dance Hall in Deadwood, South Dakota. To accommodate the onslaught of treasure-seekers rushing into the area hoping to strike and find gold, Swearingen’s all-in-one bar, saloon, shop, gambling parlor, eatery, and house of ill repute regularly stayed open 24 hours, never closing to paying patrons or “store” customers. The following spring 1877, he expanded operations to the Gem Theatre and offered all-night stage shows.

The first 911 call was placed on February 16, 1968, in Haleyville, Alabama. It was made as a successful test call by the Alabama Speaker of the House, Rankin Fite, and answered by Congressman Tom Bevill. The ability to dial a single number to report emergencies was now a reality. This new emergency number had to be three numbers that were not in use as the first three numbers of any phone number or area code in the United States or Canada. The Federal Trade Commission along with AT&T originally announced plans to build the first 911 system in Huntington, Indiana. Bob Gallagher, president of Alabama Telephone, was annoyed that the independent phone industry had not been consulted first. Gallagher decided to beat AT&T to the punch and have the first 911 emergency service built in Alabama.

On February 5, 2009, in Knoxville, Tennessee, Pat Summit of the University of Tennessee became the first Division I basketball coach, men’s or women’s, to win 1,000 career games. She coached her Lady Volunteers (or Vols) to a 73-43 victory over the University of Georgia Lady Bulldogs for her 1,000th career win. Coach Summit began coaching in 1974 and reached the victory milestone with all 1,000 wins at the same school. She has also coached her teams to 8 national championships, and may accomplish more.

The world’s first adhesive tape (now known as masking tape) was invented in 1925 by Richard G. Drew and his researchers at the 3M Company in Minnesota. This first adhesive tape was easily removed and, therefore, perfect to help autoworkers paint straight lines and make clean dividing lines on two-color paint jobs. The tape was sticky only around the sides, not in the middle. It was a 2-inch-wide tan paper strip backed with a light, pressure-sensitive adhesive.

The world’s first advertising agency, the William Tayler Agency, was founded by British businessman William Tayler in London, England, in 1785 or 1786. Tayler kept lists, files, and records of newspapers in his area, and not only acted as a newspaper agent but also an agent to the country printers and booksellers by taking in advertisements, including full-page-size, for city businesses. Tayler guided the ad placements in various print mediums and London directories. When he conducted business for a negotiable but minimal handling fee, the first advertising agency’s commission was accepted.

Product advertisements with a musical tilt can be traced back to the 1920s, around the same time commercial radio came to the public. General Mills aired the world’s first singing commercial jingle, “Have You Tried Wheaties?” as a radio spot on Christmas Eve 1926 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, area. It featured four male singers, contained several lines of copy, and ended with, “So just try Wheaties, the best breakfast food in the land!” The jingle was an absolute sensation, and the singers were christened as “The Wheaties Quartet.” General Mills went on to purchase nationwide commercial time for the catchy advertisement, and that first advertising jingle saved an otherwise failing brand of cereal.

“Dear Beatrice Fairfax” premiered on July 20, 1898, in the
New York Evening Journal
as the first “advice to the lovelorn” column. It was spearheaded by Marie Manning, who worked with two other women in what was known as the publication’s “Hen Coop.” The three had created the women’s page, and one day in 1898, editor Arthur Brisbane brought them three letters from readers seeking advice about personal problems. Manning suggested a new column exclusively devoted to dispensing personal advice. Both she and Brisbane agreed that a pen name was in order. Marie Manning suggested “Beatrice Fairfax,” after Dante’s Beatrice and the Manning family’s country place in Fairfax County, Virginia. That first advice column served as the staging ground for the later nationally syndicated sister act of Esther and Pauline Friedman, better known as “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby” for a significant part of their long and successful careers.

In 1926, Norwegian inventor Eric Rotheim discovered that a liquid could be housed in and sprayed from an aluminum can injected with a pressure-building gas or liquid. Rotheim’s pressurized container had a valve with a lever that, when pressed, released the liquid contents. But it was Julian Seth Kahn of New York City who received a patent for the first reusable spray can on August 22, 1939, for an “apparatus for mixing a liquid with gas.” Kahn’s spray can of 1939 was equipped with an inexpensive reusable valve mechanism that, under controlled pressure, could dispense such items as insecticides, paints, and even whip cream through a constricted opening. It was the predecessor of the modern aerosol spray can.

On January 30, 2009, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, was chosen as national chairman of the Republican Party to serve a 2-year term. He clinched the inner-party election with 91 votes (a majority of 85 committee members was needed). The Republicans chose Steele over four other candidates, and Steele replaced former chairman Mike Duncan. Previously, Steele had been the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland in 2002. He is an attorney by trade.

On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States at the 56th Presidential Inaugural in Washington, D.C. Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya, and his Caucasian mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Obama’s parents separated when he was 2 years old and later divorced. The Democrat senator from Chicago, Illinois, was elected president on November 4, 2008. Obama and his wife, the former Michelle Robinson, have two daughters, Malia and Natasha (Sasha).

In 1915 and 1916, during World War I, a German dirigible known as the zeppelin raided eastern England and London more than 50 times, dropping bombs in an effort to destroy the morale of the population. Civilians did the best they could, using their cellars and basements as makeshift emergency shelters, during the bombings. Howard Moyer Gounder built the first air-raid shelter in the United States in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. Completed on November 1, 1940, the shelter’s stone walls were 18 inches thick and set in concrete that supported an 8-inch reinforced concrete roof that was weather conditioned with asphalt tar. The floors also were made of cement. Bunks on one inside wall accommodated six people, while a stove provided heating and cooking capabilities. A protected chimney in the rear provided ventilation. The shelter’s entrance had heavy double doors, one opening inward and one opening outward, each with a small window.

Several accounts exist of aircraft carriers that were adapted and modified from conventional warships to see service in wartime. The most notable was the British warship HMS
Furious,
built in 1917, later modified, and in 1918, used to launch a successful attack on a German zeppelin airbase. However, an aircraft carrier is a warship designed (not modified) for the primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, so the
Ranger
was the actual first specifically designed and built aircraft carrier. It was constructed by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Newport News, Virginia; launched on February 25, 1933; and placed into service at Norfolk, Virginia, on June 4, 1934.
Ranger
’s first captain was Arthur Leroy Bristol.

The world’s first airline that operated with scheduled flights on airplanes, not zeppelins, was the St. Petersburg-Tampa (Florida) Airboat Line. The airline, which flew from January to May 1914, offered twice-a-day, six-days-a-week service across the bay between St. Petersburg and Tampa. Aircraft builder Thomas Benoist, pilot Tony Jannus, and salesman Percival Fansler launched the concept. The airline operated two Model Benoist 14 airboats and one Model 13, which was used for instruction. Each flight across the bay lasted about 22 minutes. The passenger fare was $5, and each passenger was given a 200-pound allowance, including any baggage. The first passenger was a former mayor of St. Petersburg, Abram C. Pheil, who purchased the first seat at an auction with a bid of $400. The airline’s last official flight occurred on May 5, 1914, when the airline ceased operations. Profits declined after a town subsidy expired and seasonal residents had returned north. This first airline had no crashes, passenger injuries, or deaths.

The first airline meal was served October 11, 1919, as an in-flight prepacked lunch box. It was onboard a modified WWI bomber of Britain’s Handley Page Aircraft Company on its London-to-Paris flight. This new passenger division of the company called Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals. Although served as lunch boxes, the meals were prepared and packed before taking off to be available to paying customers at 3 shillings each. Those first lunch boxes probably contained a sandwich, a piece of fruit such as an apple, and hot coffee or tea.

Another first occurred on August 26, 1919, when Handley Page Transport carried two women passengers on its airline service between England and France. The first kitchens for serving meals in flight were established by United Airlines in 1936.

The first ticket to fly on an airline with airplanes, not zeppelins, cost a walloping $400 and was used on January 1, 1914. The ticket was purchased at an auction by former St. Petersburg, Florida, mayor Abram C. Pheil. Pheil wanted to be on record as the first airline passenger and also to bolster profits for aircraft builder Thomas Benoist’s St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. Famed pioneering pilot Tony Jannus safely flew the former mayor round-trip across the bay between St. Petersburg and Tampa. The flight was only 22 minutes one-way, but it was the experience of a lifetime for Pheil. Afterward, normal fare dropped to $5 per passenger. That $5 allowed the passenger a 200-pound allowance, including any baggage, same as that first $400 ticket.

Around 2500 B.C.E., Noah constructed the first altar. As described in Genesis 8:21-22, the outdoor altar was made of earth or unwrought stone and built in the mountains of Ararat (present-day Turkey, about 750 miles northeast of Jerusalem) after the Ark had come to rest following the Great Flood. Sticks of wood were placed on top of the altar, upon which Noah made burnt offerings of every clean beast and every clean fowl. According to Scripture, the altar gave off a sweet scent and pleased the Lord.

On February 23, 1886, Charles Martin Hall of Oberlin, Ohio, invented a simplified process for producing aluminum, a lightweight, rust-free metal with good thermal conductivity. Hall went to Pittsburgh in search of financial backers and channeled his procedure into a line of cast aluminum cookware called Wear-Ever. On April 2, 1889, Hall obtained a patent for producing aluminum electrically instead of chemically, thus reducing its costs. His cookware met with indifference until 1903, when Wannamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, allowed a demonstration of aluminum cookware’s unique abilities. A chef made apple butter in a lightweight aluminum pan without the need to stir it. That one gesture made the cookware’s popularity skyrocket. Soon aluminum pots and pans become standard kitchen equipment almost everywhere.

The Knights of St. John created the first “ambulances” during the Crusades of eleventh-century Europe. The early emergency workers received instruction in first-aid treatment from Arab and Greek doctors and then treated soldiers on both sides of the battlefield by bringing the wounded, usually via hammocks or by physically carrying them, to nearby tents for further treatment. The men who transported the wounded were commonly paid small rewards.

The first motorized ambulance came into being in 1899. Made and adapted in Chicago, it weighed about 1,600 pounds and could travel up to 16 miles an hour. Five businessmen donated it to Michael Reese Hospital.

Around 50 B.C.E., Roman politician and high priest Gaius Scribonius Curio devised the concept of the first amphitheater. Until then, gladiatorial contests were held in open-area formats. To seat and accommodate spectators, Curio had two semicircular wooden stands built on a pivot. (It was really two theaters built back-to-back.) They could be pivoted or swiveled so that together they formed an oval with the audience inside. The next amphitheater, also made of wood, was built in 46 B.C.E. by Julius Caesar. Architectural engineering led the way for improvements to better support the weight of the spectators and protect the wood from being destroyed by fire. The first permanent stone amphitheater in Rome was built by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C.E.

On January 1, 1915, German pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer offered aspirin for the first time in tablet form, making it the first analgesic (antipain medicine) or painkiller in pill form. (Opium, the oldest painkiller known to man, dating to the times of Homer’s 750 B.C.E.
Iliad,
was either smoked or inhaled.) In the few years prior to 1915, aspirin was available via powdered form in glass bottles. German chemist Felix Hoffmann had developed it in 1897 as a treatment for his father’s arthritis. Another chemist, Arthur Eichengreen, also made significant contributions to the development of aspirin during this era. With the convenience of pill or tablet form, aspirin soon became the highest-selling analgesic medication in the world.