We did see it coming: the three-blade razor may be the first known instance in the history of capitalism of a product mocked long in advance of its invention.
This, I shall boldly claim, is the first recorded instance in the history of the Football League of one player whose name consists of three letters being replaced by another.
Like no other instance in the history of the drug war in Mexico, the murder of Kiki Camarena, or more specifically the numerous investigations and court cases that followed it, revealed the inner workings of the Mexican government's inability to control the cartels.
This was the overarching accomplishment that the British philosopher Alfred Lord North Whitehead had in mind when he observed that there were only two instances in the history of Western civilization when the political elite of an emerging empire behaved as well as one could reasonably expect: the first was Rome under Augustus, and the second was the United States under the Founding Fathers.
Ironically, one of the best retorts to such posturing was supplied by the founder of "liberal internationalism", Woodrow Wilson, on the occasion of US intervention into the Mexican revolution: "I challenge you," he said, "to cite me an instance in all the history of the world where liberty was handed down from above.
Even before today, the scandal was the most serious instance of corruption in the history of the troubled Los Angeles Police Department, but its growing breadth and the systematic nature of the corruption, which apparently went unchecked for years, has raised questions about the ability of the department to monitor its officers.
Astoundingly, she even claimed that there has never been "any instance in the history, at least, of NPR where a story has been slanted or, you know, favorable to a foundation funder".
They've traced the evolution of flowers in recent years, for instance, but the history of more ancient plants has remained enigmatic.
In part it is a consequence, as the journalism of the Guardian's George Monbiot has revealed, of the rise of neo-liberalism since about 1980 with its worship of the magic of the market and its ideological unwillingness to acknowledge that climate change represents, in the words of Nicholas Stern, the greatest instance of market failure in the history of humankind.
The launch and development of the National Organization for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology [NOW], for instance, characterizes a milestone in the history of hydrogen and fuel cells in Germany.
Viewed this way, his career is one of the biggest instances of over-compensation in the history of movies, his films, like those early home movies, a way of controlling and mastering an inhospitable universe, making friends of enemies, absorbing threats.
