The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.<\/p>\n
The world’s first travel agencies were Cox & Kings<\/a>, founded in 1758, and Thomas Cook, founded in 1850.<\/p>\n A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Music<\/a> was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented.<\/p>\n Beer<\/a> was the first trademarked product – British beer Bass Pale Ale received its trademark in 1876.<\/p>\n Playing-cards were known in Persia and India as far back as the 12th century. A pack then consisted of 48 instead of 52 cards. <\/p>\n Excavations from Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played with toy hedgehogs.<\/p>\n Accounts from Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly used as a tooth-cleaning agent.<\/p>\n Julius Caesar was the first to encode communications, using what has become known as the Caesar Cipher.<\/p>\n The first mention of soap was on Sumerian clay tablets dating about 2,500 BC. The soap was made of water, alkali and cassia oil.<\/p>\n The first animal in space was the female Samoyed husky named Laika, launched by the Soviets in 1957.<\/p>\n In 1958, the US sent two mice called Laska and Benjy into space.<\/p>\n In 1961. the US launched a male chimpanzee called Ham into space.<\/p>\n In 1963, the French launched a cat called Feliette into space.<\/p>\n Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps<\/a>, on 1 May 1840. Hence, UK stamps are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.<\/p>\n Napoleon<\/a>‘s christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, Napoleon hated the French.<\/p>\n John Rolfe married Pocahontas the Red Indian Princess in 1613.<\/p>\n Only one of the Seven Wonders<\/a> of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.<\/p>\n The first parachute jump from an airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1912.<\/p>\n On 21 June 1913, over Los Angeles, Georgia Broadwick became the first women to parachute from an airplane.<\/p>\n The first written account of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie<\/a>, was made in 565AD.<\/p>\n The world’s first skyscraper was the 10-storey Home Insurance office, built in Chicago in 1885. (During Roman times buildings were up to 8 stories high.)<\/p>\n