There's a journalistic rule of thumb that may be helpful to people here when they write documents professionally -- avoid superlatives, such as "the first," "the last," "the largest," "the smallest," etc. When a newsman writes for an audience of hundreds or thousands someone out there will hit the books and prove you to have been wrong on the Letters to the Editor page. The work-around is to use qualifying language -- "said to have been," "believed to have been," "allegedly," and so forth. I realize these are the kinds of weasel words that drive combat arms officers up the wall when they're used by intel people, but appropropriate qualifiers can save the writer from making erroneous statements.