Every once in a whle I realize I am doing something that nobody in the history of the world has ever done or ever will do again. That idea always tickles me.
On an 80 degree day in April, I walked home with one arm in a purple cast and white sling, and the other arm carrying a four foot high stuffed Tweetie Bird. I daresay that will only happen once in history.
What are your unique moments?
Repaired a nuclear reactor. Underwater.
In 1979, I made an station ID tape for my college radio station pretending to be the Monty Python character “Johann Gambolputty-de-von-Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crass-cren-bon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensig-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelter-wasser-kurstlich-himble-
eisenbahnwagen-guten-abend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwürstel-gespurten-mit-zweimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-schönendanker-kalbsfleisch-mittleraucher-von-Hautkopft of Ulm”.
Yes, I can recite this name from memory.
Youngest person to ever tend bar legally in NY state, a record that cannot be broken. I did this on my 18th birthday.
Almost everything I do is unique because when all else is the same the time is not and since most folks can’t stop or backup time what I do can not be duplicated.
YMMV
While I was in labor, danced in a puddle of amniotic fluid yelling “I’m Rick James, bitch!” while laughing hysterically.
Is there a story that goes with this, or was it just a spontaneous happening?
Ha! I’m totally going to do this, now!
I made Bob Newhart laugh.
During the Q and A after a 2004 lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, denounced the USA’s relationship with Uzbekistan as an affront to civilized human rights norms and a threat to the democratization of neighboring states. With a fellow from Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry sitting behind me. Probably would have moderated my rhetoric a little if I’d known that.
Suggested to the Belarussian ambassador to the US that folks might be more willing to donate to his country’s efforts to recover from Chernobyl if it weren’t such a corrupt, repressive and screwed-up dictatorship that no one could be sure the money would be spent properly.
Gave the Syrian ambassador to the US a headache. I think he was tired of people asking why his government blew up Rafik Hariri. 
Talked my way into a “young leaders” videoconference at the World Bank, purely because I wanted to be able to grab lunch at their cafeteria. It’s a great cafeteria!
Crashed the student protests at Gallaudet University in my first week of law school, because I’d heard the kids were getting pepper-sprayed. Talked my way into the building they’d taken over. This was not, in retrospect, the smartest thing I’d ever done.
Okay, one last thing, just because I thought it was funny: I’ve been a huge fan of Judge Kozinksi, out on the 9th Circuit, for years. Brilliant writer, often funny as hell. Very smart on copyright law, absent the odd kerfuffle with Betamax. He was giving a lecture on copyright law in my first year of law school, and I was psyched. So psyched that I shanghaied all my friends into going. So psyched that I printed out a copy of another speech he’d given on copyright law - back in the early nineties - so that I could ask him to sign it.
You might be able to guess where this is going. I’m sitting in the lecture hall, absolutely psyched, a copy of Judge Kozinski’s old speech right in front of me. Judge Kozinski strides to the front of the room, and begins …
To give that very same speech. Word for word. Well, almost - there was a slightly blue joke in the old text, which he left out. And he said DVD instead of VHS. But, otherwise, a perfect recitation of a nearly twenty-year-old speech - which had been billed as a speech on copyright law in the 21st century.
So, what else could I do? I walked up to Judge Kozinksi after the speech, and asked him to sign my printout of his earlier speech - which had the date typed in big, bold font. And he signed it!
Wish I still had that printout. End-of-year locker cleaning is a pain.
I wanted a natural childbirth really, really bad. I’d been in latent labor for about two or three days and in actual labor for maybe 10 hours, but my water hadn’t yet broken. They let it go on as I asked, but I’d reached the point where it was getting pretty painful and I was tired, so they decided to break my water for me. I was dead-set against having someone else break my water, so I started doing squats around the room. Suddenly, there was this really loud pop - even my husband heard it across the room - and water gushed out of me. I was so elated, I started to dance and laugh. The resident who was supposed to break water walked in, took one look at me and turned around the left - fast. I think I scared her.
I gave a business presentation to the current 123rd richest person in the world. He signed on, so apparently I did a decent job.
I once met a very high level monk in the Buddhist religion while he was visiting the U.S. and my Grandfather was joking with me and asked if I was going to ask the monk what the meaning of life was. I jokingly told my grandfather I already knew it. The monk overhead me say that and immediately came up to me to ask ME the meaning of life, putting me on the spot.
My random answer was: To love someone, have sex with someone, hold a job you got yourself that was not given to you by someone you know, to visit the one place in the world you most want to go, and to help someone not related to you achieve one or more of these things. I still remember that answer to this day, because even I was amazed that came out of my mouth.
The monk looked at me, asked how old I was (20 at the time), then walked away. To this day I have no idea if he liked my answer or thought I was a complete idiot.
I wrote several short stories and poems.
I invented a new type of hand gesture.
On two video games I’ve set records that will probably never be broken, and maybe 2-3 other people in the world even realize are possible (both of them football games, and in both of them, the score wraps around back to zero after 255 points. In Madden, I have reached around 600 points, in the other, 320 or so.)
I paddled out on my surfboard in Antarctica.
I gave a presentation about passive-solar houses to an international audience …in Esperanto.
If we’re being really strict about the “unique” part, I was the first guy to ever film an AMRAAM missile coming off the rail of an F-16 at 7.5g from a chase plane. Actually hit about 8g in my plane at the time of the shot.
If we’re not so strict, I’ve:
Seen a momma grizzly bear and her cub in the wild, well within pistol range. Not that I had a pistol at the time, nor that it would have done me any good if momma bear was hungry, but still…close range.
Was one of the first guys to take non-classified pictures of the F-117 from a chase plane. Took quite a few that were classified, too, on several missions.
Logged over 400 hours backseat time in T-38, F-4, F-15, F-16 (fighters) and UH1 (chopper). Photo-chased all of those, plus B-52, A-10, C-130 (the bad ass version), F-111, B1-B, F-105 (drone), an AWAC bird, various tankers, F-18s (navy guys driving those), Tornadoes (German guys driving those), Apache choppers (army guys driving), the bird that carries the Space Shuttle around piggy back, and a really weird plane called a “guppy” that looks like the bastard love child of a blimp and a tanker. Think NASA uses it for weightless training.
Landed an F-15 from the back seat. It was common for the pilots to allow me a little stick time after a mission was complete, but they usually took it back when we got close to the pattern. On my EoT (end of tour) flight, which, since I was leaving the military to go to law school would be the last time I’d ever fly a fighter, I requested a dog fight training sortie in an F-15, because those were my favorite. There was a tanker in the area with some extra gas available, so we did multiple engagements, and I got to fly the last one. Called “Fox 2” (firing heat seeking missile) and claimed the kill for us. On the way home, I was still flying, and my frontseater never took the airplane back. Obviously, he was right there, and would have taken the plane immediately if there was any danger.
I played NetHack in the Duke Humphrey Room at the Bodleian Library. I was waiting for a book to be retrieved, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so I fired up the laptop. That place has been around for hundreds of years and I’ll bet nobody else thought about playing a roguelike there.
I’ve held four different Bald Eagles and have been chased by a booby (blue-footed). My chestal area appeared on 20/20.
I spent my 19th birthday building houses in Africa with Jimmy Carter. He shook my hand.
I did an Eeyore impression on Jeopardy that made Alex Trebek laugh.