Everyone knows that America was the first country to, say, put a man on the moon or use atomic weapons in combat. But America was also the first country that did a lot of lesser known things, too. Historical firsts in the United States aren’t all world-changing, multi-million dollar spectacles like a moon landing: the country also pioneered a few things that may have flown under your radar.
Now, they’re not all things to feel super-patriotic about. A side effect of being one of the most powerful nations in the world is that sometimes that power gets (arguably) misused. But some things on this list just might have you randomly saluting the stars and stripes. Read on for 10 things the US did first that just might surprise you.
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Require a Health Warning on Cigarette Packs
Photo: Lindsay Fox/EcigaretteReviewed.com / via Flickr / CC BY 2.0
In 1965, America became the first nation in the world that required health warnings on cigarette packages. America made the decision to label cigarettes as a response to the Surgeon General’s 1964 report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. The first warning simply read “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health” (note the word may). The law, however, also prevented any further warnings until at least 1969, a move that the New York Times called “a shocking piece of special interest legislation” meant to “protect the economic health of the tobacco industry.”
In 1969, the required warning was tweaked to “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health” (note the word is). It wasn’t until 1984 that the packs started mentioning specific diseases such as lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. In 2012, the FDA wanted to literally put pictures of dead people on the packs, but a judge ruled that this violated the First Amendment rights of tobacco companies.
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Use Outer Space for Commercial Purposes
Photo: NASA / via Wikimedia / Public Domain
America used outer space for commercial purposes when most other countries barely even had satellites. NASA launched the Telstar 1 satellite in 1962 with sponsorship from AT&T and Bell Telephone Laboratories. The move would help the companies get back what they invested a zillion times over: the Telstar 1 was the first ever satellite to transmit live TV, telephone, and fax signals. The giant antenna pictured above is how we communicated with it down here on Earth. On July 11, 1962, the first live transatlantic TV signal aired, featuring correspondents from CBS, NBC, and the BBC. The first images broadcast were the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, and the broadcast later featured a live speech from JFK.
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Recover an Orbiting Satellite’s Payload
Photo: National Reconnaissance Office / via Wikimedia / Public Domain
Here’s a space-related “first” you don’t hear that much about: in 1960, America became the first nation to safely recover a satellite’s payload from orbit. Launches may get all the glory, but this was a pretty big deal: the Corona satellite was carrying images of the Soviet Union from space that no one had ever seen before. The Soviets managed the same feat about a week later, but with much different cargo. Korabl-Sputnik 2 was carrying two dogs, two rats, 40 mice, and several plants. (Yes, the dogs survived.)
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Formally Recognize PTSD
Photo: Icemanwcs / via Wikimedia / CC BY SA 3.0
The US was the first country to formally recognize post-traumatic stress disorder as an actual, treatable condition, which helped thousands of soldiers get the help they desperately needed. As former marine, David Morris, wrote, PTSD is an “American invention, a product of the war in Vietnam” (the term dates back to 1978). Morris says that America was the first to acknowledge it because of where, historically, we’ve fought: far, far, from home. The distance exacerbates the problem, making a soldier feel “extra-terrestrial” when they finally return. Morris says one of the most common things he hears from veterans is, “When I got back, I felt like a Martian.”
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Kill People with Drones
Photo: mcfly_98 / flickr / CC-BY-NC 2.0
The United States was the first country that killed someone with a drone on October 7, 2001, when an Air Force pilot named Scott Swanson killed two unidentified men in Afghanistan whom officials believed were bodyguards working for Taliban commander Mullah Omar. Swanson was sitting in a trailer behind a parking garage at CIA HQ in Langley, VA – roughly 6,900 miles from his target. He was the remote pilot of one of the handful of so-called “Predator” drones in existence at the time (today there are about 1,000). Engineers in California worked remotely through frequent power failures to keep Swanson connected to the drone via satellite. When Swanson found his target, he launched a Hellfire missile and about a second later the missile destroyed a pickup outside a compound in Afghanistan, making history in the process.
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Build a Floating Nuclear Power Plant
Photo: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission / via osti.gov / Public Domain
A floating nuclear power plant sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but America went down that path and built one anyway. The Navy repurposed a transport ship named the USS Sturgis in the 1960s, adding a 10-megawatt nuclear reactor to its belly and giving it the new name, MH-1A. The modifications meant that America had successfully made the ship the first of its kind on the planet – a floating nuclear power plant. Why would America do such a thing? To help power the pumps that operated the locks at the Panama Canal, of course. It did its duty from 1967 to 1975, but was eventually decommissioned because it required too much maintenance.
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Celebrate a ‘Flag Day’
Photo: jill111 / Pixabay / CC0 1.0
America loves its flag, and in 1916 it became the first country to officially set aside a day just for celebrating the flag. That’s not all: America also created the first pledge to the flag and codified the “etiquette” around handling and displaying a flag. The government doesn’t officially recognize Flag Day – mark your calendars with June 14 if you like – but it still inspires parades across the nation. President Woodrow Wilson declared the date “Flag Day” in 1916, and every president since has proclaimed its observance (though they aren’t technically required to). Why June 14? It’s the day the US adopted the flag, which makes sense, but it’s also coincidentally the “birthday” of the US Army.
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Use Lethal Injection for Executions
Photo: Ken Piorkowski / via Wikimedia / CC BY SA 2.0
Presidential candidates don’t exactly tout this one at rallies, but lethal injection owes its existence to American innovation. In 1982, the US executed a prisoner using lethal injection. Supporters claim the method treats prisoners more “humanely” than other methods, but botched executions have shown that it definitely has its flaws. Still, as of 2014, 32 states use lethal injection at least as an option for executions. (If you’re looking to become a lethal injection executioner, by the way, you only have to be 18 in Florida to apply.)
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Allow “Whole Grain” Health Claims on Food Packaging
Photo: JeepersMedia / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
Before “gluten-free” was really even a thing, America approved the use of “Whole Grain” health claims on food packaging – the first to do so, way back in 1999. Specifically, the FDA allowed companies to put the following message on boxes and bags: “Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.” It wasn’t until 2002 that the UK allowed “People with a healthy heart tend to eat more whole grain foods as part of a healthy lifestyle.” Regardless of the actual merits of whole grain, the claims worked: a 2010 study showed that “Whole Grain” was the “most sought-after claim on food labels” in the U.S.
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Be “Argued Into Existence”
Photo: davidwilson1949 / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
Author and media critic Neil Postman claims that America was “the first nation to be argued into existence,” a claim that anyone closely following politics in this country will heartily agree with. Writing about how Supreme Court decisions are actually arguments “scored” like games, Postman says that “scores [in America] are important but not as important as the process that produces them.” He argues that “the Declaration of Independence is an argument, and was composed as such.” He says in America, “the idea, from the beginning, was to allow everyone to participate in the arguments, provided that they were not slaves, women, or excessively poor.” It’s a subtle but powerful distinction: these founding documents were uniquely American arguments and expressions rather than just simple statements of law.
