The book's seventh edition (ISBN 978-1-61925-468-8), published in March 2015 — includes more than 8,000 entries on 1,400 pages.
[1] The book was originally published by H. W. Wilson Company in 1933, weighing in at 757 pages and selling for $3.50.
[2] The book was created by Joseph Nathan Kane, a freelance journalist who had assembled 3,000 "firsts" into a text that had been rejected by 11 other publishers before it was accepted by its current publisher.
[3][4] The first edition led to a 1938–39 radio show hosted by Kane on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
[1] A version focused on world history was published in 2000 (titled Famous first facts, international edition: a record of first happenings, discoveries, and inventions in world history).