First person to create, kill with gun lost to history

We know when Alexander Graham Bell successfully perfected his sound over distance device, the telephone, it was Watson who came quickly.

When the Wright brothers flew their wired-together motorized kite, it was Wilbur at the controls and Orville taking tickets and handing out the peanuts.

Likewise, the first words uttered in defining moments of man's existence have come down to us through the ages.

We all know the couplet spoken as Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface. "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind."

We have eyewitnesses to the words Samuel Morse clicked out in the first coded telegraph message from the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington to the B&O train depot in Baltimore. "What hath God wrought?"

The last words of the great and humble have also survived the ravages of time to enlighten or, in a dark way, humor us.

I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct. — Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, died 1702

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. … — General John Sedgwick, Union Commander, died 1864. Killed by Confederate sniper at Gettysburg

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. — Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, died 1923

Sadly, history failed to identify the creator of guns. It is equally remiss in noting the name of the first person shot and killed by the new discovery.

Historians have forgotten the stirring words spoken by the shooter who pulled the trigger for the first time, and worst of all, there is no hint of the last words of the initial great martyr.

However, in reverent retrospect, there are some possibilities that we could imagine from the common events of our day in regards to guns and shooting.

Who was the first shooter?

The Chinese are credited with the primary use of gunpowder, so the name of the inventor could have been Mandarin.

But there are also reports from India and from the Arab world. Mighty slave armies of various Muslim nations, the Mamluks, were said to have rudimentary pistols as part of their armamentarium, along with lances and sabers.