What things have only been done by the fewest (non-zero number of) people ever?
(The question is more interesting if you insist that the actions be defined qualitatively, not quantitatively. For instance, if the record for a 100 yard dash is 9.975 seconds, you could say “only one person has ever run a 100 yard dash in 9.975 seconds”, but there are an infinite number of such records.
Also, being the first doesn’t count… only one person was ever the first to climb mount Everest, but now plenty of people have.)
A few I’ve thought of:
(1) Only two people have won nobel prizes in multiple categories (Linus Pauling and Marie Curie)
(2) Only two people have flown around the world without refueling (Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager)
Only one person has served non-consecutive terms as US President. Grover Cleveland is thus also the only president who warrants two ordinal numbers: 22nd and 24th.
You forgot Steve Fosset, and it may be nitpicky, but every astronaut that has orbited the Earth has technically flown around the world without refueling (for certain definitions of ‘fly’).
Sure you could say they’re the only two people to fly around the world, non-stop, non-refueled, in a prop aircraft. But if you narrow it down enough, you can have lots of catagories like that.
For instance, I wonder how many people were born on Nov 28, 1978 at 6:37:32 P.M. ?
If you’re asking about the semantics of what I wrote, the N was to be minimized holding the X as given. Thus, for each X, you associate the least N appropriate to that X.
If you’re asking about which X this causes to give the least N, well, given the OP’s stipulations, any of the things mentioned which only one person has done, of course. So, I guess, X = “retired as a world heavyweight champion with no defeats and no draws in their professional career”.
Who? I was under the impression that no one walked on the moon more than once.
Apollo 11 had Armstrong and Aldrin
Apollo 12 had Conrad and Bean
Apollo 13 didn’t land on the moon
Apollo 14 had Shepard and Mitchell
Apollo 15 had Scott and Irwin
Apollo 16 had Young and Duke
Apollo 17 had Cernan and Schmitt.
To the best of my knowledge, no one other than these twelve people have ever walked on the moon and there have been no other manned missions that landed on the moon other than the ones listed here.
Nope, no one has walked in the moon twice (yet :)). Three have flown to the moon twice however. Jim Lovell on Apollo 8 and 13, John Young on Apolo 10 and 16, and Gene Cernan on Apollo 10 and 17.
All three commanded their second Apollo missions, so Young and Cernan each walked on the moon. Because of the Apollo 13 accident, Lovell lost the opportunity to land, so that would make him the only person ever to fly to the moon twice without landing on it…
Right, I just think that what you wrote is kind of meaningless. Basically you said that for a given event the amount of people that have done it is the least amount that has done it. It’s also true that that’s the most amount of people that have done it.
Obviously, the less contrived the category, the more interesting it is… for instance, I’m probably the only person to have ever won money on the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour while being a registered SDMB member who was once made an honorary citizen of the city of Vienna Austria, but who cares?
So far Steve Fosset and Rocky Marciano are winning.
