On any given day, you can wake up and do literally millions of things. You can ride a horse, climb a mountain, eat a turnip—the sky's the limit. But have you ever considered that there was a time when someone had to be first? Everything that has ever been done or will ever be done had to start somewhere. One person was the first and only one to do it, at least for a time. And even today, there are a few things that, in all the billions of people alive and in all the years behind us, only one person has ever accomplished.
10. Jim Kitchen has visited 193 countries plus space
There aren't many things left to explore in the world, but that doesn't mean humans can't still do it in ways that leave the rest of us in their dust. Enter Jim Kitchen. He may not have broken new ground, but he's been to more of them than anyone else. Jim is the only person in the world to have visited every country on the planet, and even left this world to go into space. Basically, he's been everywhere.
You can visit Jim's website and see a detailed list of the countries he's visited, broken down by continent. He's got the ones you'd expect, like Australia and England, and then there are the more obscure ones, like the Comoros Islands, São Tomé, and, of course, space, which he listed as the 194th place he's visited after 193 countries remained etched in his memory.
Kitchen launched into space on one of Jeff Bezos' rockets after visiting all 193 UN-recognized countries over 30 years.
9. Only one man has ever eaten the world's hottest curry.
YouTube is a vast place with numerous subgenres you can discover by exploring the various rabbit holes you find. One niche you can find on YouTube, which has long been a staple, is spicy food videos. Viewers love watching people suffer through insanely hot peppers and curries, and only a handful have managed to eat the spiciest dishes. One such person was Dr. Ian Rothwell, the man who claims to be the only person to eat what is known as the world's hottest curry.
The curry was called "The Widower" and was prepared at Bindi's Restaurant in Grantham, England. How hot was it? It was made from 20 Naga chilies and was reportedly worth around six million Scoville units. A single Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper in the world, can reach approximately 2.2 million Scoville units. This is pure pepper, and there are extracts that become even hotter. One of the hottest ever created is Mad Dog 357 Plutonium 9, which was valued at around nine million. So, six million Scoville units isn't unthinkable, just reckless.
Rothwell accomplished his eating feat in 2013, apparently while hallucinating. This is a known side effect of consuming too much capsaicin, the compound in peppers that makes them hot. It's unclear whether the restaurant continued to do so afterward, but it appears to be closed now, so no one can try it anymore.
8. Wisconsin has only executed one person.
Currently, 27 US states still use the death penalty as a punishment, though in most of these states it is rare. For a long time, executions virtually ceased, although they became more common in 2020, with over a dozen death row inmates executed since then. Over 15,000 people have been executed in US history. However, in Wisconsin, only one person has been granted this dubious honor: John McCaffary.
McCaffary was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, and his execution was carried out in 1851. It would be the first and last execution in Wisconsin, thanks to a botched and nightmarish effort that convinced all involved to abolish the punishment.
The sentence was death by hanging, but hanging is by no means ideal, and there's a reason we still don't do it. Things can go wrong. In McCaffary's case, he was hanged in front of a crowd of thousands. He didn't die instantly, like in the movies, or even minutes later, like in grim films. He dangled from that rope for 15 to 20 minutes, struggling and slowly suffocating the entire time, while up to 3,000 people watched. The spectacle was deemed so cruel that officials commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment.
7. Will Shortz is the only person in the world with a degree in puzzles.
You can get into college in a wide variety of challenging subjects, from bagpipes to comedy. While it's unlikely that many people earn these degrees, they must have someone interested in them for them to exist. Another extremely niche degree is in enigmatology, which is essentially a degree in puzzles. This one is so rare that a man named Will Shortz is apparently the only person in the world who has one.
How Shortz became the only accredited enigma master in the world is a bit misleading, as he developed the program himself at Indiana University back in 1974. Having created the program, he took it, completed it, and became a full-fledged enigmatologist.
What to do with a little-known, one-of-a-kind diploma? Shortz edited Games Magazine for 15 years, edited the New York Times Crossword Puzzle since 1993, and founded the American Crossword Tournament back in 1978. When you're one of a kind, you have a lot of options.
6. John J. Pershing is the only living person to have been awarded the rank of General of the Army.
The highest rank in the United States Army is General of the Army, and only one person has ever achieved this rank in his lifetime: John J. Pershing. The rank was also awarded to George Washington, but posthumously, in 1976, as part of America's bicentennial celebration.
Pershing received this rank in 1919 for his actions in World War I, which included preparing forces for a war unlike any ever fought at the time. Congress created the rank specifically for him, as it had never existed before. Since he received it, no one else has achieved it.
In the Navy, there is a more or less equivalent rank called Admiral of the Navy, which was awarded to George Dewey.
5. Philip Noel-Baker is the only person to have won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel Prize.
A person can be proud of being the best at what they do and receiving recognition for it. It's rewarding when your colleagues and the world at large can see the hard work you've put into becoming a leader in your field, no matter what you do. But it's exceptionally rare for someone to become a leader in more than one field, especially when they're even remotely similar. One of the rarest accomplishments in the world was achieved by Philip Noel-Baker, the only person ever to win both a Nobel Prize and an Olympic medal.
Baker grew up an athlete and excelled in running. In 1920, he competed in the Antwerp Olympics and won a silver medal in the 1500 meters. Thirty-nine years later, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize for his work advocating for nuclear disarmament. He remained a staunch anti-war activist and supported the abolition of nuclear weapons until the 1980s.
4. Katherine Sullivan is the only person to have visited the deepest part of the ocean and space.
Jim Kitchen may have seen space and the world around us, but Kathryn Sullivan surpassed him in one respect—she is the only person to have braved the greatest extremes of our world, both inside and out. Sullivan is the only person in the world to have traveled from the greatest heights of space to the greatest depths of the ocean in the Mariana Trench.
Sullivan was the first woman to conduct a spacewalk in 1984, at an altitude of about 140 miles above the Earth's surface.
3. Deion Sanders is the only athlete to have played in both the World Series and the Super Bowl.
Some athletes manage to demonstrate their mastery in more than one sport, but few ever reach the Big Show in any sport, let alone more than one. So far, Deion Sanders is the only athlete to have proven his mastery by winning both the World Series and the Super Bowl.
No one ever accused Sanders of being the best of the best when it came to baseball, but he did well enough with the Braves to post a .304 average and even lead the league in triples during the 1992 season. The team faced the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series and lost.
In the NFL, Sanders was a much more dominant player, with eight Pro Bowl appearances, the 1994 Defensive Player of the Year award, and back-to-back Super Bowl victories in 1995 and 1996.
2. General Peter Conover Haynes was the only veteran of both the Civil War and World War I.
No one wants to go to war, but some people feel it's their duty to defend their country and their fellow citizens from any enemy that might threaten them. If a soldier is lucky, they'll never have to risk their life, but some may have to do so multiple times over several wars. Peter Conover Haynes was one such man, the only veteran of both World War I and the American Civil War.
Despite a 52-year age difference, Haynes first served in the Civil War in his early twenties. Born in 1840, he went to West Point and became a soldier, serving in the Union Army in 1861. He even fired the first shot at the Battle of Manassas. Eventually, after the war, he found himself in the Army Corps of Engineers, building lighthouses.
By the start of World War I, Haynes was out of service and in his 70s. But his skills were needed, so he returned to duty, although he remained in the States, serving as chief engineer in Norfolk.
1. Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin is the only person to parachute into a thunderstorm at nearly 50,000 feet.
If you've never skydived before, you might not know that the average fall takes about five minutes. For some of us, that probably feels incredibly fast, and if you're afraid of heights, it might seem like an eternity. It wasn't that long for Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin to parachute back to earth in 1957.
Rankin is believed to be the only person in history to have parachuted into a thunderstorm. His story pretty clearly explains why you never want to do that, if it wasn't already obvious.
After an engine failure in his F-8 Crusader, Rankin was forced to eject at 47,000 feet, traveling at approximately 624 mph. Upon leaving the aircraft, Rankin encountered a cumulonimbus cloud, a dense, massive cloud of unstable weather. When he bailed out, the temperature was -50 degrees Celsius, and he was not wearing a pressure suit—only an oxygen mask.
Rankin immediately suffered decompression and began bleeding from virtually every orifice. He also encountered a thunderstorm filled with rain and hail, with clouds so thick that visibility was near zero.
Instead of falling as gravity dictated, Rankin began juggling with the updrafts of the thundercloud. He fell, then was sucked back in. Several minutes passed before his parachute opened, but it didn't matter.
Rankin rose and fell again and again. He said that at one point he felt sick from the motion. Lightning flashed around him, and the moisture in the air was so thick that he felt like he was drowning.
It took Rankin 40 minutes to break through the cloud and finally land, badly injured but alive.