Firsts in America

1620 First Thanksgiving celebrated

1636 First University founded in North Amer­ica – Harvard

1704 Boston News Letter, first regular news­paper in North America started

1731 Benjamin Franklin establishes first Amer­ican public library in Philadelphia

1752 Benjamin Franklin proves lightning is electricity

1793 Eli Whitney invents cotton gin

1794 Charles Wilson Peale opens first US museum in Philadelphia

1806 Noah Webster publishes dictionary, which helped to standardize the English lan­guage

1807 Robert Fulton's steamboat makes first trip between New York and Albany

1832 First horse-drawn trolleys used in New York

1839 Abner Doubleday conducts first baseball game in Cooperstown, NY

1841 First university degrees awarded to wom­en in the US

1842 New York Philharmonic founded

1846 Elias Howe invents sewing machine

1850 Levi Strauss begins manufacturing blue jeans

1851 New York Times first published

1872 Yellowstone established as first national park

1874 First US zoo opens in Philadelphia

1874 US scientist Robert Goddard launches first liquid-fuelled rocket

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1877 Thomas Edison invents phonograph

1879 Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb

1880 New York streets lit with electricity

1883 First skyscraper constructed in Chicago, Illinois

1891 US inventor W. L. Judson develops the clutching zipper

1893 Henry Ford builds the first car

1895 First professional football game played

1897 First subway opened in Boston

1903 First successful cross-country automobile trip

1910 Boy Scouts founded

1912 Girl Scouts founded

1914 World's first traffic light introduced in Cleveland, Ohio

1915 First US transcontinental telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell in New York and Dr. Thomas Watson in San Francisco

1920 US women vote for the first time

1923 Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian-born Amer­ican scientist made contributions that revolutionized television

1923 Charles Birdseye introduces concept of quick frozen food

1927 Charles A. Lindbergh completes first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean

1927 The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, is the first full-length sound motion pic­ture film

1928 First television program broadcasted

1929 The Holland Tunnel, the first underwa­ter motor vehicle tunnel in the US, was opened. The tunnel links Manhattan, New York with New Jersey

1930 Sliced bread is introduced

1938 First synthetic fiber, nylon, introduced to commercial market

1947 First US airplane flew at supersonic speed

1947 Transistor is invented

1951 Color television introduced

1955 Antipolio vaccine announced by Dr. Jo­nas E. Salk

1960 US launches first weather satellite

1962 John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth (Russian Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 1961)

1968 First direct USA—USSR commercial flights begin

1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the first per­son to walk on the Moon. The world's first totally artificial heart was implanted in a human

1970 Environmental Protection Agency found­ed

1971 Mariner 9 orbits Mars

1976 Viking I, the first spacecraft to reach Mars, lands on the planet

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first female Supreme Court justice

1986 First test tube baby born, a girl

1990 Sharon Pratt Kelly is the first black wom­an to serve as mayor of a major urban city