Famous First Facts has been a readers’ favorite since it was first published. Here’s a sampling of the response to the first edition:

"Here is a book more fascinating, if that is possible, than the dictionary. Moreover, it is something new under the sun, which the dictionary isn't, and so has the added allurement of novelty."
—The New York Times, May 1933

"Will be in steady use in the reference rooms of libraries, especially in those frequented by teachers and newspaper men."
—Saturday Review of Literature, May 1933

E-mail sent in 1971 by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson, an engineer at the technology firm of Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA, across the ARPANET, the U.S. Army-built precursor to the Internet. The message was sent by Tomlinson to himself as a test of the ARPANET’s messaging capabilities and contained no memorable content.

Space tourist millionaire businessman Dennis A. Tito, a former aeronautics engineer and founder of Wilshire Associates Incorporated, an investment analysis firm in Santa Monica, CA. Tito paid $20 million to the Russian space program to fly aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. The eight-day trip took place from April 29 to May 7, 2001.

Astronaut who was a woman to pilot the space shuttle was Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Marie Collins, a 1990 graduate of the Air Force Test Pilot School, who joined NASA in July 1991. On her initial mission, on February 3, 1995, she served as pilot of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which docked with the Russian space station Mir in the first flight of the joint Russian-American space program. She became the first woman to serve as commander of a space flight on July 23, 1999, when the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, to loft the Chandra X-Ray Observatory into a high elliptical earth orbit.

Home computer commercially available was the H316 “Kitchen Computer,” a minicomputer made by Honeywell in Minneapolis, MN, and released in 1969. Priced at $10,600, it was available through the Neiman Marcus catalog, which featured it on the cover. The “Kitchen Computer” was essentially a recipe-filing device that could plan meals for the cook to prepare. Ad copy for the device read, “If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute.” Using the device required owners to pass a two-week programming course.

Athlete depicted on a Wheaties box was Lou Gehrig, baseball player for the New York Yankees, whose picture appeared on the back of Wheaties cereal boxes in 1934. The first woman featured on a Wheaties box was aviator Elinor Smith, also in 1934. Wheaties, invented in Minneapolis, MN, and introduced to the market in 1924 as Washburn’s Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes, found a lucrative market among sports fans after it was advertised in 1933 on a billboard at a local baseball stadium.

Single by Elvis Presley was “That’s Right Mama,” recorded at Sun Studios Memphis, TN, and released on July 19, by Sun Records. The recording was produced by Sam Phillips. Presley was backed guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill “That’s All Right Mama” was written bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup recorded by him in 1946. Presley’s considered by many to be the first influential rock-and-roll recording.

Theme park was Santa Claus Land, a Christmas-themed park in Santa Claus, IN, founded by retired businessman Louis J. Koch. The park, which opened on August 3, 1946, offered rides, food treats, an antique toy collection, and a wax museum, as well as a Santa Claus impersonator. The name was changed to Holiday World in 1984.

Chemotherapy to successfully achieve remission of cancer was given in November 1947 by Dr. Sidney Farber to a group of 16 children with acute leukemia at the Children’s Medical Center, Boston, MA. The children received doses of aminopterin, a drug that blocks folic acid, in an attempt to stop the production in their bones of abnormal bone marrow, the source of malignant white blood cells. Ten of the children went into temporary remission.

Spider-Man comic-book was issue #15 (August 1962) of Amazing Fantasy (formerly Amazing Adventures, then Amazing Adult Fantasy), published by Marvel Comics, New York, NY. Spider-Man, described in the Marvel copy as “America’s most different new teen-age idol!,” was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and designed by artist Steve Ditko. The Amazing Fantasy story introduced readers to troubled high school student Peter Parker and explained how he gained his superpowers from a radioactive spider. The value of a mint edition of Amazing Fantasy was more than $42,000 in 2005. Spider-Man proved to be so popular that he was given his own title, The Amazing Spider-Man, starting in March 1963.

Blockbuster prescription drug was the tranquilizer Valium, invented in 1959 and approved by the FDA in 1963. Valium belongs to a class of chemical compounds, the benzodiazepines, that reduce feelings of anxiety by influencing the activity of the neurotransmitter GABA. They were developed beginning in1954 by Leo Henryk Sternbach, a chemist employed by Hoffman-LaRoche, Nutley, NJ. The first of the benzodiazepines to be approved for prescription use, in 1960, was Librium. Valium, the second to be approved, was the most popular prescription drug in the United States for more than a decade and earned billions of dollars annually

Music video on MTV was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles, a duo consisting of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes. The song was cowritten by them and Bruce Woolley, and the video was directed by Russell Mulcahy. It was broadcast on August 1, 1981, the launch day for the MTV (Music Television) cable channel, which was based in New York City.

Grammy Award to be retracted was revoked on November 20, 1990, when the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences stripped the 1989 Best New Artist Grammy from Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, the duo known as Milli Vanilli, because neither actually sang on their debut album, Girl You Know It’s True. Pilatus and Morvan had been hired by producer Frank Fabian to impersonate the actual singers, who were talented but insufficiently attractive.

Webmail service was Hotmail, launched on July 4, 1996, by company founders Sanbeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. The Hotmail service allowed members to check their e-mail via the World Wide Web anywhere in the world without the need for a personal e-mail client. Hotmail was sold to the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, WA, in January 1998 for $400 million.

Film to earn $1 billion worldwide was Titanic, an epic romance about the doomed luxury liner. The 1997 film was written, produced, and directed by James Cameron and distributed by two Hollywood studios—Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. By March 2, 1998, the film had earned $575.7 million in the international box office and $427 million in North American theaters, for a total of $1,002,706,625. It was the highest- grossing film of all time, as well as the highest-grossing film in more than 50 countries.

Nuclear waste storage site deep underground was the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, located in salt beds 2,150 feet (655 meters) under the desert near Carlsbad, NM. The site, created to store hundreds of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste materials generated by the production of nuclear weapons, was licensed for plutonium storage by the U.S. government on May 13, 1998.

Family car with its own video entertainment system available as a factory-installed option was the 1999 Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan, offered by General Motors, headquartered in Detroit, MI. The van could be equipped with a 5-inch (13-centimeter) LCD screen and a video cassette player.

Chess grandmaster who was African-American was Maurice Ashley of Brooklyn, NY, a Jamaican-born immigrant who had been playing and studying chess since his teens. He earned the rank of grandmaster on March 15, 1999, in a tournament sponsored by the Manhattan Chess Club. The title of grandmaster is awarded by the International Chess Federation.

Digital projection of a major motion picture took place on June 18, 1999, when four theaters—two in New Jersey and two in California— screened George Lucas’s science fantasy film Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace using experimental filmless digital projection systems from competing manufacturers CineComm and Texas Instruments. In both systems, a computerized projector delivered images to the screen directly from a motion graphics file stored on a high-capacity hard disk or downloaded from a satellite transmission.

Space-flight commander who was woman was U.S. Air Force colonel Eileen Marie Collins, who joined NASA in July 1991. On July 23, 1999, she commanded four crew members aboard the space shuttle Columbia as it lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, to loft the Chandra X-Ray Observatory into a high elliptical earth orbit. This was her fourth shuttle mission. On her initial mission, in February 1995, she became the first woman to pilot a space shuttle, flying the Discovery to the Russian space station Mir.

Identification of human remains using dental evidence was made in March 1776 by Paul Revere, the Boston silversmith and revolutionary. Revere supplemented his income by making false teeth out of ivory and other materials and wiring them in place using silver wire. One of his patients was Dr. Joseph Warren, a leader of the Boston rebels (in April 1775 he had sent Revere on his famous ride to Lexington to warn of the approach of the British army). Warren was shot in the face during the Battle of Bunker Hill at Charlestown, MA, on June 17, 1775, and was buried by the British in an unmarked grave. After the British ended their occupation of Boston and Charlestown the following March, Warren’s two brothers and Revere located the grave and uncovered two decomposing bodies. Revere recognized in one of them the two false teeth he had made for Dr. Warren, resulting in a positive identification.

Sale of Girl Scout cookies as a method of raising money for troop activities began in December 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop of Muskogee, OK, baked cookies and sold them in the high school cafeteria. Widespread door-to-door sales of Girl Scout cookies began after troop leader Florence E. Neil wrote an article in the July 1922 issue of The American Girl magazine, in which she suggested that batches of sugar cookies could be sold for 25 or 30 cents per dozen. In 1936 the national Girl Scout organization began licensing commercial bakers to produce Girl Scout–branded cookies for sale by local councils.

Cloned pet was CC, a kitten that was born by cesarean section on December 22, 2001, at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. CC was a shorthaired calico cat cloned from the cells of Rainbow, an adult female. Gestation took place in the uterus of a second cat. The team that created CC was led by Mark Westhusin and funded by John Sperling, founder of a commercial animal-cloning company, Genetic Savings and Clone.

Outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States was announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on December 23, 2003. A single dairy cow from a farm in Mabton, WA, was found to have the disease, also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy. BSE is an incurable and fatal brain-wasting disorder that can be transmitted to humans who eat contaminated meat. Several countries, including Japan, Brazil, Australia, and Taiwan, immediately banned the import of U.S. beef.

Ticker-tape parade took place in lower Manhattan on October 28, 1886, the day that the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. The day had been declared a public holiday in the city, and a parade of 20,000 people headed for the Battery, viewed by a crowd of more than 1 million. The streets were draped with red, white, and blue bunting in the designs of the French and American flags. As the parade came down Wall Street, according to the New York Times, workers in the financial houses “from a hundred windows began to unreel the spools of tape that record the fateful messages of the ‘ticker.’ In a moment the air was white with curling streamers.”

Billionaires who were African-American were Robert L. Johnson and Sheila Crump Johnson, cofounders of the cable network Black Entertainment Television, Washington DC. Their company, BET Holdings, was sold to Viacom on November 3, 2000, for $2.3 billion in stock, and they split the proceeds.

Dunkin’ Donuts was opened in 1950 in Quincy, MA, by entrepreneur William Rosenberg, who had previously run a luncheon service that brought meals to area factories. The shop was originally called the Open Kettle. Rosenberg’s key insight was to franchise the donut-and-coffee breakfast concept. His first franchise agreement, for a shop in Worcester, MA, was signed in 1955. By 2005 there were more than 6,000 Dunkin’ Donuts locations worldwide.

Sticky notes were Post-it Notes, introduced by 3M of St. Paul, MN. The adhesive was invented in 1968 at 3M’s Corporate Research Labs by chemist Spencer Silver. It was composed of tiny acrylic spheres that formed a temporary bond with paper. No product application could be found for it until 1974, when another 3M employee, chemical engineer Arthur Fry, realized that he could mark book pages in his choir hymnal using slips of paper backed with Silver’s weak adhesive. The company began marketing its new product by giving away samples and quickly built up a demand. Sales began nationwide in 1980.

Art museum for children was the Children’s Art Center of Boston, MA, which was intended to serve poor children in the city’s South End. It opened in 1918 under the auspices of the local settlement house, headed by Albert Kennedy. The artworks it exhibited were loaned by Boston galleries.

Fistfight in the Senate took place on February 28, 1902, between two South Carolina senators, Benjamin Tillman and John McLaurin. Tillman accused McLaurin of changing his position on a treaty for political gain. McLaurin called Tillman a liar, and a brawl ensued. The Senate later adopted a rule prohibiting in its members any words or behavior deemed “unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”

American mayor to be knighted was Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. He was granted an honorary knighthood on February 13, 2002, by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain for the leadership he displayed in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001.

Hand transplant that was successful was completed on January 25, 1999, at Jewish Hospital, Louisville, KY. Recipient Matthew Scott, a 37-year-old paramedic from New Jersey, received a new left hand in a 15-hour operation performed by a team of surgeons from the University of Louisville and Kleinert, Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center. The chief surgeon was Dr. Warren Breidenbach. A year later, Scott was able to use the hand to tie his shoe, deal cards, and sign his name with a pen. The world’s first hand transplant operation was carried out on a New Zealand man, Clint Hallam, in France in 1998, but in 2001 surgeons removed the transplanted hand at his request.

Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite that could be used for civilian purposes was placed in orbit on February 14, 1989. Launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, atop a Delta II booster, it was the first of 24 so-called Block II satellites (all manufactured by Rockwell International) that were intended to provide precise, three-dimensional location and navigation information for any GPS-compatible transceiver on the surface of the earth or in near-earth space. The GPS system was originally developed by the federal Department of Defense to meet military requirements.

Gay pride march took place on June 28, 1970, in New York City, in commemoration of the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion (the riot in lower Manhattan that marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States). The march started in Greenwich Village and ended in Central Park. About 2,000 people participated. Gay pride marches were also held in three other cities, including Los Angeles, CA, where 1,200 took part.

Law making identity theft a federal crime was the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998, which made transferring or using another person’s means of identification a crime subject to federal penalties. Means of identification was defined as including name, social security number, date of birth, official state or federal driver’s license or identification number, alien registration number, government passport number, and employer or taxpayer identification number.

American to climb all 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters (the equivalent of 26,240 feet) was Ed Viesturs of Seattle, WA, a high-altitude specialist who, unlike many mountaineers, did not rely on bottled oxygen. On May 12, 2005, he completed his campaign to climb all 14 when he reached the summit of Annapurna in Nepal. In all, the effort took 16 years, beginning with his climb of Kanchenjunga in May 1989. All 14 highest mountains are in the Himalayas.