The ancient Babylonians were the first people to keep written records. Clay tablets from 3000 B.C. and earlier have been found containing records of business transactions and judgements.
The first dictionary was made by Chinese scholars in 1109 B.C. (source)
The first (ancient Greek) Olympic games were held in 776 B.C. The only event was a short footrace down the centre of the stadium in Olympia. [ Firsts | Sports and Games ] (source)
The story of Cinderella first appears in a Chinese book written between 850 and 860 A.D. [ China | Firsts ]
Aristotle provided the first conclusive argument for a spherical earth when he noted during a lunar eclipse that the shadow the earth cast on the moon was circular.
The first Greek astronomer to suggest the sun was the centre of the solar system was Aristarchus of Samos, around 290 B.C. No one took him seriously, and his writings no longer exist. We know of him today only because Archimedes (whose writings do exist) referred to Aristarchus as holding this apparently nonsensical notion. [ Firsts | Ancient Greek Science and Philosophy | Solar System ] (source)
The first person on record to denounce slavery as an evil was Euripides. He wrote in his play Hecuba, "That thing of evil, by its nature evil,/ Forcing submission from a man to what/ No man should yield to." [ Slavery | Firsts ] (source)
The Phoenician navigator Hanno was likely the first to circumnavigate Africa, around 500 B.C. He observed that, at the southern end of Africa, the noonday sun shone in the north. This observation sounded ridiculous to the Greek historian Herodotus, who reported the tale, but this report shows that Hanno likely either did circumnavigate Africa, or or at least made a good attempt to do so. He likely wouldn't have been able to imagine the sun shining in the "wrong" part of the sky if he hadn't seen it. [ Exploration | Ancient People ] (source)
Shi Huang-Ti was the first emperor of a united China and founder of the Qin dynasty. Were he a European ruler, he would likely be considered great. The Chinese, however, have given him a negative reputation because of his ruthlessness, massive conscription of labour, wars, harsh laws, and burning of books in 213 B.C. [ China | Firsts | Royalty ]
The saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" was first spoken by St. Ambrose. When St. Augustine arrived in Mediolanum (modern-day Milan) in 387 A.D., he noticed that the Church in Milan did not fast on Saturday as did the Church at Rome. He asked Ambrose about this, who replied "When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Folow the custom of the Church where you are". The comment was changed to "When they are in Rome, they do there as they see done" by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and still later assumed the form we know it in today. [ Firsts | Saints ] (source)
The first man ever to set foot on the continent of Antarctica was an American sealer, John Davis. He did this on February 7, 1821, but the fact was not known until 1955, when the log of his ship was discovered and studied. [ Exploration | Firsts ] (source)
The first novel ever written is believed to be The Tale of Genji, written in the first decade of the 11th century by Murasaki Shibuku, a Japanese noblewoman. It contains 54 chapters. [ Firsts | Books and Literature ]
Man's first known attempt at flight dates back to 1020 when Oliver of Malmesbury, an English Benedictine monk, strapped a huge pair of wings to his body and endeavoured to soar into the air from Malmesbury Abbey. He fell and broke both legs. [ Transportation | Firsts ] (source)
In 1191 A.D., Dean Herbert decided to apply sailpower to his landlocked farm in England. The result was the first English windmill, which he successfully used to grind corn until the local abbot had it destroyed. [ Medieval England | Firsts ]
The first patent for a fax machine was issued to British clockmaker Alexander Bain in 1843, over 30 years before the telephone. In 1865, Abbé Caselli introduced the first commercial facsimile system, between Paris and Lyons. Newspapers began to send photographs starting in 1902. Modern fax machines were developed by the Japanese due to difficulties in otherwise transmitting their written language. [ Technology | Firsts ]
The first iron wire was drawn at Nuremburg in 1351. (source)
Ferdinand Magellan was not the first explorer to sail around the world. During his journey, he and several of his men were killed in the Phillipines, and one of his officers, Juan Sebastián de Elcano, led the expedition back to Spain. [ Firsts | Exploration ] (source)
Barometers were first made by Torricelli in 1643. (source)
In 1662, John Graunt, a London merchant, published the first set of actuarial tables in his book Observations on the Bills of Mortality. In his list of deaths in London in 1632, seven people are listed as being murdered, 10 people as dying of cancer, and no mention is made of heart ailments. On the other hand, 13 people are listed as dying of "planet", 38 from "king's evil", and 98 from "rising of the lights". Possibly the saddest statistic, however, is that out of 9,535 deaths that year, 2,268 of them were of infants. [ Statistics | Firsts ] (source)
The world's first fatal railway accident was on June 17th, 1831, when the boiler exploded on America's first passenger locomotive and the first American locomotive in regular revenue service, The Best Friend of Charleston, killing the fireman. [ Transportation | Firsts ]
The first patent for a fax machine was issued to British clockmaker Alexander Bain in 1843, over 30 years before the telephone. In 1865, Abbé Caselli introduced the first commercial facsimile system, between Paris and Lyons. Newspapers began to send photographs starting in 1902. Modern fax machines were developed by the Japanese due to difficulties in otherwise transmitting their written language. [ Technology | Firsts ]
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was the first person to propose that what we now call galaxies lay outside the Milky Way and were indeed galaxies (or "island universes", as Kant called them) in their own right. [ Philosophy and Religion | Firsts | The Universe ]
The first machine gun, the Puckle Gun, built in 1722, was also the most unusual. It could fire two types of bullets. When targeting lesser enemies such as Christians, round bullets were used, but for truly hated enemies such as Muslims, more destructive square bullets were used. [ Weapons | Firsts | Strange But True ]
Marie Curie, codiscoverer of radium, was the first person known to have died of radiation poisoning. Until Curie's death it was not known that radiation was dangerous. [ Firsts | Medicine ]