World's First

A granite plane marks the site where a French aviator completed the first airplane flight across the English channel.

Three plaques mark the spot where the "forgotten father of broadcasting" worked.

The world's first purpose-built indoor shopping mall opened in Sweden in 1955.

This inconspicuous pharmacy went down in history as the first gas station in the world after fueling the first road trip ever taken.

The Netherlands' first car tunnel has an unusually rectangular shape.

The first museum dedicated to exploring humanity's cultural relationship with the celestial world.

Now abandoned, the world's first torpedo factory is crumbling into the sea.

Now famous as the "Harry Potter bridge," this impressive concrete viaduct has long been an icon in its own right.

Once an ancient Roman bath, now a hotbed of geothermal energy and a hub for energetic innovations.

An easy-to-miss plaque marks the building that first held this 19th-century telephone innovation.

A memorial to the politician who became Great Britain's first fatality to be caused by a locomotive.

America's original house of worship for Spiritualism, the religious movement based on communing with the dead.

The oldest certified bowling alley in the United States is in the basement of this century-old bar.

This old-fashioned carhop restaurant gave the world the waffle cone.

This Massachusetts home was the first to have a telephone line and its own phone number: 1.