Surgeons from the University of Louisville performed the first self-contained mechanical heart implant on an unnamed American patient at the Jewish Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, on 2 July 2001. The artificial heart is known as the AbioCor and is made from a metal and plastic motorized hydraulic pump. The clinical team performing the implant was lead by University of Louisville surgeons Laman A. Gray, Jr., M.D., and Robert D. Dowling, M.D. The surgery lasted seven hours and involved a team of 14 nurses, perfusionists, physician
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The first console game to present the player with a single, unbroken 3D world was Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Thanks to developer Naughty Dog’s advanced ‘streaming’ technology, the game world could be explored without any loading times between areas. Even Grand Theft Auto III, released two months before Jak and Daxter , featured loading times between Liberty City’s islands.
The H4, built by John Harrison (1693-1776), was the first timepiece ever constructed that was accurate enough to allow the calculation of longitude during navigation by seafarers. In tests at sea, this large revolutionary pocket watch lost just five seconds in six weeks. This was three times the accuracy required to win the ‘Longitude Prize’. The H4 was first tested at sea when John Harrison’s son, William, set sail with it for Jamaica on 18 November 1761. The Longitude Prize, a £20,000 award, was offered
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The first, and so far only, ship to have been sunk by a nuclear submarine in conflict was the ARA Belgrano, a cruiser belonging to the Argentine Navy. She was sunk on 2 May 1982 by the nuclear hunter-killer submarine HMS Conqueror, using three Mk 8 torpedoes, each with an 362-kg (800-lb) warhead, during the Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina. Two of these warheads actually struck the Belgrano, and she sank with a loss of 323 crewmembers. Originally built as the USS
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The very first National Sheep Counting Championships were held in Hay, New South Wales, Australia on 14-15 September 2002, in which hundreds of sheep run past competitors who try to guess a precise figure. Peter Desailly (Australia) beat 100 other entrants and took the inaugural title by correctly counting 277 sheep.
The Henriksdal plant in Stockholm, Sweden was the world’s first major waste-water plant to be built underground. It was built between 1941 and 1971, and involved the excavation of nearly 1 million m³ (35,300,000 ft³) of rock. It is now being enlarged, with the extension due for completion in 1997.
The cosmetician Madame C. J. Walker (née Sarah Breedlove) (1857–1919) of Delta, Louisiana, USA is reputed to have become the first self-made millionairess. She was an uneducated African-American orphan whose fortune was founded on a hair straightener.
The first shootout goal in NHL history was scored – on the first ever shot – by Daniel Alfredsson (Sweden), playing for the Ottawa Senators, against the Toronto Maple Leafs and goaltender Ed Belfour (Canada) at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, on 5 October 2005.
The first title in an established first-person shooter series to completely abandon the single-player element and focus solely on multiplayer battles was Quake III Arena. The game was ported to both PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast consoles, and was followed by the Team Arena cooperative expansion pack in 2000. A remake of Quake III Arena is underway for Xbox Live Arcade. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamer”s Edition 2010
On 5 January 2008, Alicia Keys became the first solo singer to replace themselves at the top of the US R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart, when her single ‘Like You’ll Never See Me Again’ dethroned her previous release ‘No One’ at No.1.