Notable Last Facts

Notable Last Facts is a book published by the American librarian/writer William B. Brahms in 1992 and was the first relatively comprehensive collection of important lasts.

Although that work mainly details American culture (TV, Radio, Sports are almost completely American examples), and to a lesser extent with European culture (in Art, Music and Transportation for example), some sections (Nations, Wars, Slavery, Voting, and Era & Empires for example) do have a broad international treatment. The smaller trivia books on "lasts" by Christopher Slee (cited below) have a treatment that is almost exclusively limited to the United Kingdom. Examples of "Notable Last Facts" include the last surviving participant or witness to a historic event, the last work produced by a major artist, author, performer or musician, or perhaps the last remaining example of a once-prevalent style or object, such as a type of architecture, or a make or model of an automobile, motorcycle, or airplane. Notable lasts are often used a finite demarcations of social, artistic and historical eras or periods. They also serve, often unintentionally, to mark advances, failures and change. In other fields of study, a notable last can be used to assist in dating objects, buildings and artifacts by helping to establish a terminus ante quem or a terminus post quem relative to the date of the notable last event. A differentiation is made between a simple "last" (which includes the last time something happened that will likely happen again—such as the last time there was an unassisted triple play in baseball or the last time it snowed in September in New York City) and a "notable last" (which are limited to concrete endings; thus not possible or highly improbable to ever happen again—such as a deceased composer's last work or the last act in a specific war that has ended).