FIRST AND FIRST

WORLDS OLDEST NEWS AGENCY

AFP (Agence France Presse) is the world's oldest established news agency, founded in 1835 by Charles-Louis Havas, the father of global journalism, a former banker, set up a business translating foreign newspapers. It began in Cubhyhole Office in Paris.

In the beginning pigeons flew between Paris and Boulogue carrying the news from Brussels (Belgium) and London(England). By 1845 the Agency was using the electric Telegraph. Today, the agency continues to expand its operations worldwide, reaching thousands of subscribers (radios, TVs, newspapers, companies) from its main headquarters in Paris and regional centers in Washington, Hong Kong, Nicosia and Montevideo. All share the same goal: to guarantee a top quality international service tailored for the specific needs of clients in each region.


WORLDS OLDEST BOOK

The world's oldest book in the history of mankind written in Etruscan, the language that is now lost, can be seen in Bulgaria's National Museum of History in Sofia. The rarity consists of 6 pages made of 24-carat gold and fastened together; the pages are covered with text and carry images of a horseman, a mermaid, a lyre and warriors.

The small book which age is over 2.5 thousand years was accidentally discovered 60 years ago in an old tomb with frescoes. The tomb was discovered in the Valley of Bulgarian Struma River during road construction works. A Bulgarian who lives in Macedonia presented the museum with the artifact on condition of anonymity. The benefactor discovered the book himself. As is known, the man is 87 years old now.


WORLDS OLDEST SONG

For fifteen years Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, who is professor of Assyriology, University of California, and a curator at the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, puzzled over clay tablets relating to music including some excavated in Syria by French archaeologists in the early '50s. The tablets from the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) were about 3400 years old, had markings called cuneiform signs in the hurrian language (with borrowed akkadian terms) that provided a form of musical notation. One of the texts formed a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world. Finally in 1972, Kilmer, developed an interpretation of the song based on her study of the notation


WORLDS OLDEST FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT

Worlds oldest form of safe, affordable, family entertainment is The Circus that dates back thousands of years worldwide.


WORLDS OLDEST PAINTING

The world's oldest reliably-dated paintings are found on the walls of the Chauvet caves in southern France. The paintings, which feature animals such as horses, rhinoceros, lions, and mammoths, range from 32,000 to 23,000 years old. They were discovered in 1994.


WORLDS OLDEST CITY

Hamoukar, the worlds oldest known city in a remote part of Syria, located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers according to archaeologists. This apparent city was thriving at least 4000 B. C. - which is 6,000 years ago and functioning independently from Sumer. Cvilizations were advanced enough to reach the size and organizational structure that was necessary to be considered a city

The huge city is spread over 750 acres and is believed to have been home to up to 25,000 people. The archeologists found five large stone ovens large enough to feed huge numbers of people. This seems to indicate that this was a community with industries. Also, astonishing is the fact that the living quarters were double walled with a 2-inch gap between the two walls to encourage airflow, a primitive form of air conditioning since the summer temperatures in that region could reach 40C and above. Discoveries include stone gods, jewelry, porcelain figurines of lions, leopards, bears and horses, together with porcelain-like pottery, 7,000 beads, more than a hundred clay seals with hieroglyphics used to record trade transactions, and a large protective city wall.


WORLDS OLDEST TRADE

Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century is the Worlds oldest Trade. In a five-volume magnum opus on the Dutch East Indies, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–26), Calvinist minister François Valentijn appropriately called the enslavement of human beings "the world's oldest trade" (den oudsten handel in de wereld). For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch were active participants in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. For brief spells during the seventeenth century they even dominated the Atlantic slave trade, while for nearly two centuries they were "the nexus of an enormous slave trade, the most expansive of its kind in the history of Southeast Asia.”


WORLDS OLDEST CAR

The worlds oldest car built in 1833 was handed over to the Berlin Museum for Traffic and Technology by a private owner. The car achieved a maximum speed of 40 km/h with steam from its coal fired boiler.


WORLDS OLDEST FOOD, VEGETABLE AND SPORTS DRINK

Fruits and vegetables are undoubtedly mans oldest food. Before the start of the organized agriculture, the prehistoric nomads lived on wild game, wild fruits, berries and roots. When the ancient man took to organized agriculture he cultivated grain crops as also some vegetables in his backyard.

The oldest vegetable known to man is Broad Bean and the oldest sport drink in the world is Water.


WORLDS OLDEST NATIONAL FLAG

According to a legend, Dannebrog fell down from the sky on June 15, 1219 to the Danish King Valdemar II during his crusade to Estonia. With the flag in hand, the King won the battle at Lyndanise near Reval (Tallinn). The flag was given to him as a divine approval. This is the explanation Danes like to give in order to tell the origin of the Danish national flag. If the legend of how Dannebrog became the Danish national flag were true, it would make it the World's oldest national flag still in use.


WORLDS OLDEST CREATURE

Scientists have decided that a fossil found near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire is the remains of the oldest creature ever to live on land. It is thought that the one-centimetre millipede which was prized out of a siltstone bed is 428 million years old. Experts at the National Museums of Scotland and Yale University, US, have studied the fossil for months. They say the specimen is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land, rather than in the sea.

The discovery on the foreshore of Cowie Harbour was made by an amateur fossil hunter, Mike Newman. To recognise his role in the significant find, the new species - Pneumodesmus newmani - has been named after him. The fossil is believed to be some 20 million years older than what had previously been thought of as the oldest breathing animal - a peculiar spider-like creature chiselled out of the chert - a hard quartz rock - at Rhynie, also in Aberdeenshire. The millipede had spiracles, or primitive breathing structures on the outside of its body, making it the oldest air-breathing creature ever to have been discovered.


WORLDS OLDEST SPORT

Ulama, the oldest sport in the world played with a ball, is still being played in western Mexico. The oldest ulama court, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, was built around 1500BC, while latex balls used by the Olmecs, farther west, have been carbon-dated to 300-500 years earlier. Ulama is played on a long, narrow court, called a taste, which is 60 metres long and only four metres wide. The opposing sides, of five players each, take turns serving the four kilogram rubber ball and thereafter trying to move the ball up the field, hitting it only with the hip or upper thigh, which are protected by special garments. Points are scored if one team fails to return the other's serve across the halfway point of the taste, or if the serving team succeeds in getting the ball past the opponent's end line. The first team to score eight points wins.

OLDEST ARMY IN THE WORLD
The oldest-established military unit in the world is the 80-90 strong Pontifical Swiss Guard in Vatican city. The unit was officially founded on January 21, 1506, by Pope Julius II.

FIRST STAMP IN THE WORLD
The first atmp in the world was "Penny Black", released on May 6, 1841. It featured a portrait of Queen Victoria and got its name from the fact that it cost one penny and was printed in black ink. The second stamp in the world which was issued by Canton Zurich on January 3, 1843, featured the value of the stamp in large print on a netlike background.