4 Famous Historical Firsts (That Weren’t First At All)

4The Original Rosa Parks

What You Think

When Rosa Parks, a Black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man, it sparked the bus boycott, one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s first big movements that led to bus segregation being declared unconstitutional. It was one small step (er, sit) for Rosa, one giant leap for mankind.

AP

Confusing school students for years to come because the back is where the cool kids sit. 

But Actually

Long before Rosa Parks, there was a very tired young girl named Claudette Colvin. 

Like Parks, Colvin sat on a bus and would not move. It wasn’t a grand statement— she was just tired. But after she refused to give up her seat, the local chapter of the NAACP decided that would make the perfect type of stand—a Black woman refusing to give up her seat because she was tired, but Colvin just wasn’t the right look. 

Unlike Parks, Colvin was a darker-skinned, pregnant teen, which raised concerns from activists about her marketability, so they had Parks do it instead. You know when a famous band has a hit song, but it turns out it’s just a cover from an obscure band no one’s ever heard? That’s basically what Rosa Parks’ not giving up her seat was: an awesome cover of something cool that someone else did.

The Visibility Project

“15 years old and already ‘too tired’? This generation is the worst.” 

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However, despite Colvin’s arrest for what Parks would do later, she never got any widespread attention. The NAACP had been planning to do something about bus segregation, but it wasn’t until Colvin’s story came out that they decided, “Hey, let’s just do that, but when the bus kicks off our plant, let’s get real loud about it.” 

Parks became famous for her take on Bus Boycott, and Colvin, arrested nine months earlier in the same city, on the same bus route, faded into obscurity. 

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3The Wright Brothers Weren’t The First Flyers

What You Think

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Back in the early days of the 1900s, the Wright Brothers achieved the first successful manned flight and created the airplane, which would lead to thousands of horrible things, not least of which is the TSA.

John T. Daniels

You can’t see it, but Wilbur has his shoes off in this pic. 

These bicycle brothers created some of the first planes, testing them in wind tunnels and endlessly working on redesigning their manned flyers. Years later, planes would revolutionize warfare, travel, and peanuts. 

But Actually

The Wright Brothers weren’t the firsts to achieve flight, though they were some of the more successful ones at it. Hell, the Wright Brothers didn’t get very interested in flight until after Otto Lilienthal, a German engineer, died while trying to achieve flight with a glider. Lilienthal completed 2000 flights with different gliders and formed the basis of the Wright Brothers’ research into how to achieve flight.

Library of Congress

In another timeline, we’d be flying these to work each day.

4 Famous Historical Firsts (That Weren’t First At All)
Source: Pinoy Daily News