The earliest recorded assassination attempt was against the Pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Amenemhat I, around 2000BC.

The first atom bomb to be used aggressively in battle, was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan by the United States at 8:16 a.m. on 6 August 1945. It had an explosive power equivalent to that of around 15 kilotons of trinitrotoluene (C7H5O6N3), called TNT. Code-named Little Boy, it was 3.04 m (10 ft) long and weighed 4,082 kg (9,000 lb). It burst 565 m (1,850 ft) above the city centre.

Augmented Reality (AR) games combine real-world data with computer data, enabling players to interact with computergenerated characters on screen. The first console game to feature such technology was The Eye of Judgment for PS3. The game used the console’s PSEye camera to gather real-world images and read the coded information on small physical trading cards. This information allowed the game to bring the characters on the trading cards to life on the screen. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamer”s Edition 2010

On 6 July 2010, the Hachette Book Group announced that James Patterson (USA), creator of the Alex Cross and Women’s Murder Club series of novels, was the first author to exceed one million sales in electronic books, moving 1.14 million units of his books for devices like Kindle and the iPad. At the time of the announcement, there was no third-party monitor of e-book sales, so Hachette used its own figures and checked other prominent authors. The publisher didn’t find any others who had cracked Continue reading →

The HiRiSE camera on NASA´s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took images of a 700 m tall steep slope near the north pole on 19 February 2008. Upon analysis it was found the orbiter had accidentally captured clouds of debris fanning from the base of the slope, where ice and dust had broken loose and fallen just seconds before.

Juan de la Cierva’s (Spain) model C.4 aircraft, commercially named an Autogiro, was the first successful gyroplane, or aircraft where lift is provided by rotating wings. It first flew at Getafe, Spain on 9 January 1923, after he had worked on the design for four years. Within days he flew a two-and-one-half-mile closed course and, by 1928, had crossed the English Channel.

The earliest recorded ascent was by a model hot-air balloon invented by Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão (né‚ Lourenço) (1685-1724), which was flown indoors at the Casa da India, Terreiro do Paço, Portugal on 8 August 1709.

The earliest ballet to be inspired by a video game series was Dragon Quest. Composed by Koichi Sugiyama and choreographed by ballet master Minoru Suzuki, it was originally written in 1995 and premiered in Tokyo, Japan, in 1996. It has been performed several times since: in 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2002.

Hungarian journalist Ladislo Biro created the first ball-point pen with his brother George in 1938. Biro took his inspiration from watching newspaper ink dry quickly, leaving the paper smudge-free. Since this thicker ink would not flow from a conventional pen nib, he revolutionised pen design with the idea of a ball-point. The first Biro went on sale in 1944 and cost the equivalent of £60 today. The Royal Air Force was one of the first organisations to use the Biro as they needed a pen, Continue reading →

Ivan André Trifonov (Austria) flew a one man Thunder and Colt Cloudhopper balloon 1 km (0.6 miles) over the geographic North Pole at 18h30 GMT on 20 April 1996.