1620 ..... U.K ..... the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth on September 6th and FIRST touched land at the tip of Cape Cod on this day. It did not reach Plymouth Rock until the following December 21st 

1830 ..... U.K ..... mail was FIRST transported by railway. By 1838 railways had connected Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham with London and in the same year an experimental ‘ travelling post office’ was introduced on the Grand Junction Railway in which mail could be sorted and bagged up en-route

1887 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST photographically illustrated advert was placed by the Harrison Patent Knitting Machine Company of Portland Street, Manchester (UK). It was published in The Parrot and depicted the company's display stand and attendant staff at the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition

1906 ..... two Italians made the FIRST balloon crossing of the Alps - Milan to Aix-les-Bains 

1919 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST anniversary of the Armistice was marked by two minutes silence at 11 a.m 

1921 ..... U.K ..... the British Legion held its FIRST Poppy Day under the direction of Field Marshall Earl Haig. Disabled ex-servicemen worked all year making the poppies which, in this year, helped to raise £106,000 to help widows, orphans and the estimated 500,000 disabled British ex-servicemen. The day was inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields written by John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces 

1925 ..... U.K ..... the BBC broadcast its FIRST play on the radio - The White Chateau by Reginald Berkley 

1940 ..... 55 Polish intellectuals died in Dachau's FIRST official mass execution

1946 ..... U.K ..... Stevenage was officially designed as Britain’s FIRST New Town, one of ten which were planned to relieve London’s post-war housing problems 

1952 ..... U.S.A ..... the FIRST video recorder was demonstrated in Beverley Hills, California by the inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson 

1969 ..... women set foot on the South Pole for the FIRST time when six arrived by air 

1982 ..... SPACE ..... the FIRST operational space shuttle flight took place

1998 ….. in the FIRST joint engagement of its kind, the Queen and the Irish president, Mary McAleese, unveiled a peace tower in memory of the Irish dead of the First World War

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