Convicted axe-murderer William Kemmler became the first man to be executed by electrocution on August 6, 1890, at Auburn State Prison, New York.
Harold P. Brown had conceived the idea of death by electrocution and conducted the early experiments.
Thomas Alva Edison supplied the equipment.
According to the official report, the procedure, which had to be repeated to induce death, took eight minutes.
The first skyscraper was the 10-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago It was designed by William Le Baron Jenney and completed in 1885. The first tall building to be supported by an internal frame of iron and steel rather than by thick masonry walls, it was demolished in 1931.
The first used-car dealership was the Motor Car Company of London, which opened in September 1897. It offered 17 secondhand vehicles, ranging in price from £30 to £335.
The first woman in space was Valentina V. Tereshkova of the USSR. She made 48 orbits of the earth in a three-day mission in Vostok 6, June 16 to 19, 1963.
The first person to die in the gas chamber was Gee Jon. He was convicted of assassinating a member of a rival Chinese tong and died in a gas chamber in Nevada State Prison in Carson City on February 8, 1924. The idea of the gas chamber was introduced by Major D. A. Turner of…
The first woman to be commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp was the wife of the first president. This did not happen until the twentieth century. In 1901, Martha Washington was commemorated on the 8-cent stamp. In 1918, she was pictured on the 2-cent prepaid postcard; in 1920, on the 4-cent stamp; and in 1938,…
Of the 2,200 persons quoted in the current edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations only 164 are women. This is an astronomical increase over the number quoted in the 1855 first edition of four.