On 28 october 2007, Tomaz Humar (Slovenia) became the first person to solo Annapurna l. Humar chose to climb a new route along the right side of the south face in pure “alpine” style (meaning that he carried all his equipment and food with him, as opposed to “expedition” style, in which the climber benefits from porters and fixed lines.
The first person to walk the length of the Amazon River was Ed Stafford (UK) and he completed the trip in 2 years, 4 months and 8 days (860 days), finishing on 9 August 2010. Ed started on 2nd April 2008 and walked 24 of the 28 months with Cho, his guide and friend, from Peru to Brazil. The course of the river that he walked was 4,345 miles. If you add the 145 miles that he walked from Pacific Ocean to find the source then that totals
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At the 1952 Academy Awards held at RKO Pantages Theatre, USA on 19 March 1953, stage actress Shirley Booth (USA, b. Thelma B. Ford 1897-1992) won Best Actress for Come Back, Little Sheba (USA 1952) based on a play she previously had performed on Broadway. Not very popular in flims – she returned to the stage, with a small stint on TV in the early 1960’s in the comedy series Hazel. When she died, it was discovered she was ten years older than most books
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The first person to walk on skis to both Poles solo and unsupported is Marek Kaminski (Poland) who completed reached the North Pole from Ward Hunt Island on 23 May 1995 (a journey of 880 km or 546 miles in 72 days), and to the South Pole from Berkner Island on 27 December 1995, a distance of 1,400 km (870 miles) in 53 days. NB: Kaminski has an acute accent on the ‘n’.
The first posthumous Oscar was awarded at the 1939 Academy Awards on 29 February 1940 to Sidney Howard for his screenplay of Gone With The Wind (USA 1939). He had been killed in a farm accident.
The first personal computer (PC), known as Simon, was released in 1950. It retailed at $600 (£214) and had a six 2-bit word memory, giving 12 bits of memory in all. It was developed by Edmund Berkeley (USA). Simon is also known as the Simon Mechanical Brain and the Simon Electromechanical Personal Computer. Berkeley outlined the idea of the Simon computer in his 1959 book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think, going on to develop his theories in a series of 13 essays published between
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Released in Japan on 2 December 2006 and in the USA the following week, Elebits was the first physics-based puzzle game released for the Nintendo Wii console. The game, which sees players manipulating the Wii Remote to uncover and capture small creatures, was released in Europe and Australia in May 2007 under the title Eledees. It was Konami’s first game release for the Wii. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamer”s Edition 2010
The US helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky has announced a 1 billion US dollar programme to produce the first, pilotless combat helicopter in 2011 for introduction into service by 2015 at a cost of £10.6 million each.
The first ever pictures from the surface of the Moon were taken by the Soviet robotic lander Luna 9. Launched on 31 January 1966, the small probe landed on 3 Feb and transmitted data until 7 Feb. DID YOU KNOW? Some of the Soviet scientists and engineers wanted to dedicate the mission to Sergei Korolyev, a pioneer of the Soviet space program who had recently died. But the Soviet authorities refused as his work was still a state secret!
“Catcerto” is a four-minute piano concerto for chamber orchestra and cat composed by Mindaugas Piecaitis (Lithuania). The piece – in which the orchestra accompanies a video recording of a cat pawing at notes on a piano – was debuted at the Klaipeda Concert Hall in Klaipeda, Lithuania, on 5 June 2009, with Nora the cat at the piano. Composer/conductor Piečaitis notated Nora’s melody from a video recording he had seen on YouTube then composed the orchestral accompaniment to match. The piece requires the orchestra to
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