The "modern" (so to speak) process of Featured Article candidacy was created on 24 June 2003 by User:Eloquence. Prior to that time Wikipedia had a system known as Brilliant Prose to recognize its best content, which was an ad hoc collection of articles added to the Brilliant prose page by various editors.
Starting in November 2001 these additions are readily available in the [merged] page history of Wikipedia:Featured articles. This page commemorates the earlier process and contains history up to 17 August 2001. There are some missing edits from August to November 2001 which have as yet not been found.[2]
and this is the revision from 00:02, 22 January 2001, which was current when the first Wikipedia-l email referencing "14 not-bad articles so far" was sent:[4]
TheCanonofScripture -- MathematicalGrouP -- NewZealand -- PythagoreanTheorem -- SabBath -- TaoTehChing -- TheMostRemarkableFormulaInTheWorld -- TheRecorder