When Napoleon's ship had borne him to Elba, French wines had started to cross the Channel, the first shipments in a dozen war-ridden years, but the supplies had not yet reached rural hostelries where the sweet wines of the Spanish peninsula still ruled.

Although Mr. Brown was not himself its inventor ( it was a French idea ), it is typical that his intuition first conceived the importance of mass producing this basic tool for general use.

So it was that when Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharpe first saw the French tool on exhibition in Paris in 1868, they brought a sample with them to the United States and started Brown & Sharpe in yet another field where it retains its leadership to this day.

Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason's fictional detective — Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté — who, first appearing in the 1910 novel At the Villa Rose, predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years.

In its origins and its first golden age, no art owes quite as much to state power as French painting does.

In 1806, the French chemists Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated a compound in asparagus that was subsequently named asparagine, the first amino acid to be discovered.

New History in France: The Triumph of the Annales, ( 1994, first French edition, 1987 ) excerpt and text search

* 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.

The question whether there is a limit to the degree of cold possible, and, if so, where the zero must be placed, was first addressed by the French physicist Guillaume Amontons in 1702, in connection with his improvements in the air thermometer.

* 1944 – Alençon is liberated by General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, the first city in France to be liberated from the Nazis by French forces.

* 1808 – Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.

Andrew's first mission to the East was when he was asked by the French king Louis IX to go and fetch the Crown of Thorns which had been sold to him by the Latin Emperor of Constantinople Baldwin II in 1238, who was anxious to obtain support for his tottering empire.

From the unexpected realism of his first major figure — inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy — to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, Rodin's reputation grew, such that he became the preeminent French sculptor of his time.

The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959.

The first ironclad battleship, with iron armour over a wooden hull, La Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in 1859 ; she prompted the British Royal Navy to build a counter.

He is very popular with women ; when he and his comrades meet three French women, he is the first to seduce one of them.

The first generation of television chefs such as Robert Carrier and Julia Child tended to concentrate on cooking based primarily on European, especially French and Italian, cuisines.

Salieri's first French opera contained scenes of great solemnity and festivity ; yet overshadowing it all was darkness and revenge.

As the political situation threatened and eventually overwhelmed Austria, which was repeatedly crushed by French political forces, Salieri's first and most important biographer Mosel described the emotional effect that this political, social, and cultural upheaval had on the composer.

* 1809 – Two Austrian army corps are driven from Landshut by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France as two French corps to the north hold off the main Austrian army on the first day of the Battle of Eckmühl.

Wind tunnels were key in the development and validation of the laws of aerodynamics. In 1889, Charles Renard, a French aeronautical engineer, became the first person to reasonably predict the power needed for sustained flight.

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles.

Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize.

Catherine's first war against the Grand Turk had ended in 1774 with a peace treaty quite favorable to her.

In his spare time, Grand polishes up his Latin, and he is also writing a book, but he is such a perfectionist that he continually rewrites the first sentence and can get no further.

Albert of Prussia (; ) ( 17 May 1490 – 20 March 1568 ) was the 37th and last sovereign Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and, after converting to Lutheranism, the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia, which was the first state to adopt the Lutheran faith and Protestantism as the official state religion.

He first joined the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1840 then had in the interim joined a Masonic Lodge and become extremely active in the affairs of the organization, being elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction in 1859.

* Albert of Prussia, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and the first duke of Prussia.

He was suspected and denounced, but nothing ensued until the establishment of the Inquisition in Rome in June 1542, at the instigation of Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa, the first Grand Inquisitor, and later Pope Paul IV.

While on his first cross-country tour, he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and defied that conservative show's ban on using drums of any sort.

Jack Brabham took the team's first win at the non-championship Solitude Grand Prix in 1963.

At the French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux, Jack Brabham became the first man to win a Formula One world championship race in a car bearing his own name.

The club won its first AFL Premiership by defeating Essendon 15. 18 ( 108 ) to 12. 10 ( 82 ) in the 2001 AFL Grand Final.

The first recorded permanent inhabitant of the Cayman Islands, Isaac Bodden, was born on Grand Cayman around 1700.

To break out of the limitations caused by river valleys, the first summit level canals were developed with the Grand Canal of China in 581 – 617 AD whilst in Europe the first, also using single locks, was the Stecknitz Canal in Germany in 1398.

The Xia Dynasty of China ( from c. 2100 to c. 1600 BC ) is the first dynasty to be described in ancient historical records such as Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian and Bamboo Annals.

The first systematic Chinese historical text, Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, was written by Sima Qian.

Records of the Grand Historian is the first among Twenty-Four Histories, a collection of Chinese historical books covering a period of history from 3000 BCE to the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century.

She had ceased to attend the meetings when she was nominated to be the first woman Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America, but the nomination was withdrawn at the request of her husband, Thomas Reggie, who said that due to the Alzheimer's progress the award and ceremony would be at best confusing and likely upsetting to her.

The Dutch Grand Prix was a round of the World Drivers Championship for the first time not a Formula One race, as the World Championship was for Formula Two cars that year and in 1953.

Circuit Park Zandvoort played host to the first race in the 2006 / 07 season of A1 Grand Prix from 29 September-1 October 2006.

He wrote his first published novel, Eclipse ( 1935 ), about a town and its people, in the social realist style, drawing on his years in Grand Junction.

In 1727 the first French commander, M. Le Grand, took charge of the island and established a rudimentary government thus making Dominica formally a colony of France.

* 1895 – The Lumière brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, marking the debut of the cinema.

* 1775 – The becomes the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag ( the precursor to the Stars and Stripes ); the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones.

* 1927 – The phrase " Grand Ole Opry " is used for the first time on-air.