Robin Knox-Johnston (UK) was the first person to circumnavigate the world under sail solo and without stopping. He departed from Falmouth, Cornwall, UK, on 14 June 1968 as a participant in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, and by the time he returned to Falmouth on 22 April 1969 he was the only remaining competitor. His yacht was called Suhaili. Knox-Johnston was knighted in 1995 after winning the Jules Verne trophy for the fastest circumnavigation under sail the previous year.

The earliest daily TV service began on 30 September 1929 when programmes by John Logie Baird (UK) were transmitted by the BBC from the Long Acre Studio, UK The first TV sets or Baird Televisors, were sold for 26guineas (œ27.30) in May 1930.

The earliest recorded rail fatality occurred on December 5, 1821, when a carpenter, David Brook, was walking home from Leeds, England, along the Middleton Railway in a blinding sleet storm. He failed to see or hear an approaching train of coal wagons drawn by one of the Blenkinsop/Murray engines and was fatally injured. The first passenger-train accident in the US occurred on November 9, 1833 on the Camden  Amboy Railroad between Spotswood and Hightown, New Jersey. One carriage overturned and 12 of the 24 passengers Continue reading →

Although experimental services had operated across the world from the 1920s, the television broadcasting age as we recognize it began at 3 p.m. on 2 November 1936 in London, UK, when the BBC launched the world’s first regular television broadcasts.

The 1st International Robot Olympics was held on 27–28 September 1990 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. An Olympic torch was carried from the Parthenon Greek restaurant through the streets of Glasgow by Trolleyman (a golf-cart-like wheeled robot that eventually suffered power failure) before robot representatives from the USA, Japan, Canada, Europe and the former Soviet Union participated in events such as collision avoidance, wall climbing, speaking and bipedal walking. Unfortunately, a carpet laid especially for the event was the undoing of most Continue reading →

The first people to row across the Pacific was John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook (both UK), in Britannia II between 26 April 1971 – 22 April 1972. John Fairfax is also the first person to row any ocean solo, after he rowed the Atlantic east to west in Britannia between 20 January – 19 July 1969. In addition, John Fairfax was the first to row two oceans.

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 Continue reading →

The earliest surviving film (sensitized 53.9mm (21/8in) wide paper roll) is from the camera of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (UK), who filmed in early October 1888 the garden of his father-in-law, Joseph Whitley in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK at 10 to 12 frames per second. The camera used was later patented in Britain on 16 November 1888.

The earliest sound-on-film motion picture was achieved by Eugene Augustin Lauste (1857-1935), who patented his process on 11 August 1906 and produced a workable system using a string galvanometer in 1910 at Benedict Road, Stockwell, London, UK.

On 4 October 1958, the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) began operating the world’s first transatlantic jet service (between London and New York City), with the British De Havilland Comet.