Example sentences of "[vb mod] [verb] been the first " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | That the most northerly of the Anglian kings should have been the first non-Kentish ruler to adopt Christianity in the 620s is , at the very least , surprising . |
| 2 | A general strike brought Kosovo virtually to a standstill on Sept. 3 , and schools were also boycotted on what should have been the first day of a new school year . |
| 3 | ‘ Ears of grain were called apples of gold , which must have been the first gold in the world while metallic gold was unknown … |
| 4 | She learned that Maxim had an elder sister — oddly , she 'd always assumed he must have been the first child — who had married a Quaker school-master and lived up North , had three children and did n't work , ‘ Except at disapproving of the Army , ’ Maxim added . |
| 5 | Just such a sentry must have been the first to die , the night the Welsh came . |
| 6 | He must have been the first cousin of Man . |
| 7 | I think he might have been the first black player in England but I know Celtic fielded jazz and rap pioneer Gil Scott Heron 's Dad in the 30s — a great success there apparently . |
| 8 | The irony is , Juice could have been the first from the starting blocks , as he explains from an unstreet sofa in a chintz sitting room in Soho 's exclusive Hazlitt 's Hotel . |
| 9 | Some will say that is fortunate , as the weather forecast for the weekend made it seem likely that it could have been the first ‘ one-day ’ final to span three days . |
| 10 | Had the score been the other way round I 'm sure we 'd have been the first match to be shown with umpteen repeats of all the goals . |
| 11 | These early nautiloids were probably predators also , and if this were so they may have been the first rapidly moving , efficient hunters in the sea . |
| 12 | Of all these expanding emotions , the one which we call compassion , may have been the first to emerge and could be the one of greatest importance , but the origins of all of them could almost certainly be found far back in evolutionary time . |
| 13 | There was little money available for luxuries , yet in 1928 a group of children from the Royal Cross School for the Deaf , Preston , made what may have been the first ever educational overseas school trip when they went to France and Belgium . |
| 14 | Frenchman Clement Ader 's bird-winged Eole may have been the first aircraft to take off under its own power ( a 20 hp steam engine ) in 1890 , but never really flew , lacking natural stability and any control system — though Ader did invent what is still the French word for an aeroplane : avion . |
| 15 | ‘ Jesus may have been the first man who understood the power of some actions . |
| 16 | Among the writers who influenced Smith were the Lancashire dialect poet Edwin Waugh , whose poems he liked to read aloud , and Samuel Smiles [ qq.v. ] , who may have been the first man to interest him in technical education . |
| 17 | Previous popes had been in France , and the teaching of the school of St Victor in Paris and of Peter Abelard was known to them , but Innocent III may have been the first pope to have studied at the Paris schools . |
| 18 | John Pilmay 's glasshouse at Silkstone may have been the first successful venture in the district . |
| 19 | The 6000 surviving Orang Asli are divisible into three groups : the 2000 nomadic foraging and trading Semang ( who may have been the first to arrive ) , with temporary camps in the forest ; the Senoi with shifting cultivation ; the Proto-Malays who replace the forest with their own gardens and fruit trees . |
| 20 | A teenager has told police she may have been the first victim of a man who 's attacked two women in recent months . |
| 21 | If he 'd been convinced , he would 've been the first to nab the Cap'n . |
| 22 | Kepler , a spacecraft to orbit Mars and study the planet 's atmosphere , magnetic field and gravitational field , would have been the first European planetary mission . |
| 23 | He would have been the first person to agree that this is an inadequate label for a process in which some sets of ideas are restructured and some are rejected . |
| 24 | He would have been the first non-Scandinavian to star in a Bergman film , an honour which went eventually to the more laid-back Elliott Gould . |
| 25 | The preceding section ( as Tolkien would have been the first to declare ) probably falls into the perennial academic vice of neatness , over-valuing system and ‘ invention ’ instead of ‘ inspiration ’ . |
| 26 | The giant herbivorous dinosaurs would have been the first to go , as plant matter became scarce , but they would soon be followed by the large carnivores that had preyed upon them . |
| 27 | What 's more , I would have been the first to complain . |
| 28 | Malcolm stoically prevented what would have been the first Test hat-trick in England since 1960 , but soon became Waqar 's record 22nd wicket of the series , leaving Smith a gallant 84 not out in four hours of great determination , to finish on the high note upon which he started the series , since which there had been much disappointment . |
| 29 | Those who were approached would almost certainly have included Trevor Glover of Penguin ( who as a former president of the Australian Book Publishers Association offered unique experience to the post ) , Paula Hahn of Longman ( who , if she had accepted , would have been the first woman president in the PA 's history ) , Simon Masters of Random House , John Clement of Chambers , Philip Sturrock of Cassell , David Young of HarperCollins , and the current treasurer , Philip Kogan of Kogan Page . |
| 30 | As Branson would have been the first to acknowledge , common sense dictated that he avoid it at all costs . |