Who Did It First?: Recent Episodes
Who Did It First
Have you ever wondered who the first woman was to win the Nobel Prize? What about the first athlete to say "I'm going to Disney World" after a Super Bowl Victory?
And why on Earth do these things stick around after they've been done once?
Join ME on a journey to discover that there's a first for everything, and how it all snowballs into virality.
Have you ever wondered when the W3 even started, and what the very first web page was?
We got you covered.
Who was the first superhero?
Hugo Hercules: ever heard of him? Neither had we.
HUGO WAS THE creation of a 23-year-old Tribune artist named Wilhelm Heinrich Detlev Körner
Hugo Hercules was created in 1902. He boasts superhuman strength and a heart of gold.
What did he do? Saving damsels in distress; lifting an elephant; debunking armed robbers.
For 5 short months, anyway. Apparently, America’s readers weren’t ready for a hand-drawn, super-powered individual in 1902. They would be three decades later, after World War I and the Great Depression created a need for escapism. But by the time the U.S. comic book industry was born, in 1933, Hugo Hercules was long gone.
WHETHER HE WAS stopping a speeding trolly car with his bare hands, or wielding a full-size cannon as though it were a pistol, the friendly colossus known as Hugo Hercules was pulling off superhero-type feats long before anybody even thought to use the word.