Of course this is right… not sure why I put walked in there. Carry on!
Benoît Lecomte is the only person to have swam across the Atlantic.
It’s not an achievement but I’m fairly certain I’m the only person alive with my first name and surname.
I think that the OP is getting after something that one would think a lot of people have done that in actuality were done by very few. The Jeanette Rankin one is a good example. With as many pacifists/isolationist elected before WWI and WWII and the tendency of Congressmen to stay in office, it is surrising that only one person voted against the Declaration of War.
Javier Sotomayor is the only human to have high jumped 8 feet.
(Well, the only documented person, though I doubt there’s a large number of undocumented 8 foot high-jumpers out there).
Except that the baseball examples that were given are not cases of the person to do X the most, but rather the only person to do X.
For example, someone else can come along and get his 512th win, displacing Cy Young off the top of the wins chart. However, he will then be alone at the top of the list.
The examples given, however, do not rely on the person having the most of any particular stat, but being the only person to accomplish a feat, which is repeatable by others. It is conceivable that another person could come along and be elected to both the Baseball and Pro Football HOFs, and it’s conceivable that another person could come along and hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in the same inning.
Zev Steinhardt
What’s also interesting about Rankin is that those were the only two Congressional terms that she served in. She represented Montana from 1917-19 and then again from 1941-43.
While about fifty Congress(wo)men voted against the U.S. entry into WWI, she was the only one who voted against declaring war on Japan following Pearl Harbor.
Zev Steinhardt
Here’s some more:
Roger Woodward is the only person to survive going over Niagara Falls without a “barrel” of any kind.
Nine people have won a Primetime Emmy, Oscar, Tony and Grammy:
Mel Brooks
John Gielgud
Marvin Hamlisch
Helen Hayes
Audrey Hepburn
Rita Moreno
Mike Nichols
Richard Rogers
Jonathan Tunick
Only three people have starred in movies that have grossed over $3.5 billion over the course of their careers
Tom Hanks
Samuel L Jackson
and the all time leader (if you can guess this, kudos to you…)
Frank Welker
Only four people have won two Nobel Prizes…
Marie Curie
Linus Pauling
John Bardeen
Frederick Sanger
Zev Steinhardt
That’s five. What did you win for? 
Zev won for excellence in statistics and data collection on obscure trivial accomplishments.
Only one person has ever won both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year…Those are back to back 1000+ mile dogsled races…Lance Mackey
On top of which, while the remaining daughter, the late Ève Curie,[sup]*[/sup] never herself won a Nobel, her husband collected the Peace Prize on behalf of UNICEF at the 1965 ceremony.
Incidentally, the Curie grandkids - Hélène Langevin-Joliot and Pierre Joliot - have had none-too-shabby scientific careers by most other standards.
- [sub]No, I hadn’t realised that she’d been still alive at 102 until after her death was announced in October this year.[/sub]
THAT’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. Thank you.
Was Makoto Nagano the second victor? I keep hearing there were two, but the only one I’ve seen complete all four stages is the former crab fisherman guy with the spiked hair and really bad eyesight.
Okay. Andrew Jackson is the only president to survive two assassination attempts within seconds of one another. Richard Lawrence approached Jackson at the Capitol Rotunda with two pistols. The first misfired, so he tried the second, which also misfired. Jackson then subdued Lawrence with his cane (let’s see a modern president do that, eh?), until he was restrained by others.
I have to ask: Which of them was ‘restrained by others?’ (I have this image of Andrew Jackson beating the guy senseless…)
From the sound of things, a little from column A, a little from column B. This Wikipedia page says that Jackson attacked Lawrence with his cane, “prompting his aides to restrain him.” Lawrence’s page states that Lawrence was quickly wrestled into submission by people in the crowd, including congressman Davy Crockett (speaking of “things I’d like to see our elected officials in DC doing today”…), but doesn’t mention Jackson needing to be subdued.
Yup, that’s the other one. He completed the course in the 17th competition.
Yes, but both of Ford’s attackers were woman (You’ve come a long way, baby) who had previously been infamous (Squeaky Fromme of the “Manson family” and Sara Jane Moore who was involved in the circus around Patricia Heart’s kidnapping). What had Robert Lawrence done previously?
And if you believe that one I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn and some nice land in Florida. If his wiki is to be believed he swam an amazing 6-8mph for 6 to 8 hours every day. That’s twice as fast as anyone else in the world.
There is someone else who’s swam down the Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi and Danube rivers, Martin Strel. Even with the river flow he averaged 2-3mph.