1637 ..... U.S.A ..... Anne Hutchinson, the FIRST female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy

1836 ..... U.K ..... the FIRST long-distance voyage by air from England was made by the hydrogen balloon, The Royal Vauxhall Balloon. It was manned by Charles Green, Robert Holland and Monck Mason who ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, London and travelled 480 miles to land near Weilberg in the Duchy of Nassau the following day

1895 ..... GERMANY ..... the FIRST person to prove that X-Rays existed was Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, a Professor of Physics at the University of Wurzborg and he passed his discovery on to the world on this day 

1935 ….. U.K ..... RNIB Talking Books distributed its FIRST players and records to blind and partially sighted people. The idea was borne out of the need of the many soldiers blinded in the First World War who found Braille difficult to learn.  The RNIB was able to take advantage of the introduction of the gramophone player to record its first Talking Books. By 1937 the venture was declared an outstanding success with 966 gramophone players in people's homes and thousands of recorded books ordered from their record library. In 1955 the service was further developed with the introduction of the FIRST Talking Books on tape.  The year 2000 saw recordings made on compact discs (CD) 

1967 ..... U.K ..... Henry Cooper beat Billy Walker and became the FIRST and only boxer to win 3 Lonsdale Belts outright 

1988 ..... U.K ..... Lynn Draper Rush and Melanie MacCullum became the FIRST women prison officers at Dartmoor Prison after completing a Home Office training course

1990 ..... IRELAND .....  Mary Robinson became the FIRST woman President of the Irish Republic 

1993 ..... U.K ..... Mary Mcleod became the FIRST woman Diocesan Bishop 

1998 ….. U.K ..... families of WW1 soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in the FIRST ceremony of its kind to pay tribute to the 306 servicemen who died

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