1915 ..... U.S.A ..... the film Birth of a Nation by D W Griffiths was shown for the FIRST time. It ran for 3 hours and told of the American Civil War. A cast of 18000 actors and 3000 horses made 5000 scenes. By 1920 it was estimated that 100m people around the world had seen it

1924 ..... U.S.A ..... the FIRST execution by the gas chamber took place in Nevada, America. Nevada was the FIRST state to adopt execution by this method and the FIRST victim was Gee John, a Chinese immigrant who was sentenced to die after being found guilty of shooting dead Tom Quong Kee, a rival gangster.  It took 6 minutes for him to die. The idea of using poison gas as a means of execution came from Major D A Turner of the U.S Army Medical corps, who declared it to be the ' quickest and most humane method of putting a human to death' 

1968 ….. U.K ..... the film Planet of the Apes was FIRST shown in Britain 

1973 ..... U.K ..... Mohammed Shafiq became the FIRST non-white policeman to join Lancashire Constabulary (Bolton Division) 

1994 ..... U.K ..... Anne West became the FIRST woman to be appointed a partner in Cazenove, London’s most traditional stockbrokers 

1996 ..... SPACE ..... Thomas Reiter became the FIRST European Space Agency astronaut to do a spacewalk when he stepped into space during a 179 day mission to Mir

1998 ..... Prince Charles became the FIRST British Royal to visit Bhutan

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