Home Page

 25th

1807 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST ever rail passenger service in the world left Swansea for Mumbles. It ran successfully for nearly 20 years but when a road was built in 1826 passengers transferred to the new horse-drawn coaches 

1876 ..... U.K ..... Wales played their FIRST international soccer match losing 4-0 to Scotland in Glasgow 

1896 ..... the FIRST modern Olympic Gold medallist was James Connolloy (USA) who won the triple jump with 44’11 3/4”. Under today's rules he would have been disqualified as he took 2 hops and then jumped. The correct sequence is a hop followed by a step and then a jump 

1901 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST diesel motor went on show in the UK 

1949 ..... U.S.A ..... the FIRST British film to win an Academy Award was Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet which won 5 Oscars 

1973 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST ten women members of the London Stock Exchange were elected and the following day Mrs Susan Shaw became the FIRST woman to set foot on the floor of the London Stock Exchange. Provincial exchanges had admitted women members in 1945 but the City of London held out for 171 years. By 1978 there were still only 30 women members out of a total of 4,000 and the FIRST woman jobber was not allowed in until 1981 

1989 ..... U.K ..... Oxford and Cambridge boat race crews both had women coxes for the FIRST time. Oxford won 

1992 ..... U.K ..... Elizabeth Eden was sworn in as the FIRST woman High Sheriff of Devon

1993 ..... U.K .....  Barbara Harmer became the FIRST woman to fly Concorde when she took control of the British Airways flight from London to New York 

1997 ..... U.K ..... Britain’s FIRST museum of its kind, a medical museum, opened in Leeds. The Thackray Medical Museum looks at medicine through the eyes of ordinary people and shows how improved living conditions and advances in the health business have helped us live fifty years longer than was the case in the 1800s. A reconstructed Leeds street of 1842 vividly uses the country’s FIRST ‘Health of the Nation’ survey to show appalling living conditions

Back to top of page ** Next page ** Previous page