title: In SQL, how to select rows with matching values in one column, based on earliest date in another column
body: <p>I think this should be a simple SQL exercise, but I am not sure how it is done as I am new to querying dbs with SQL. I have a table that looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>select * from myschema.mytable
  
  customer_name                   date
           nick    2017-06-19 19:26:40
            tom    2017-06-21 19:24:40
          peter    2017-06-23 21:25:10
           nick    2017-06-24 13:43:39
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'd like for this query to return only one row for each unique name. Specifically, I'd like the query to return the rows for each customer_name with the <strong>earliest</strong> date. In this case, the first row for nick should be returned (with date 2017-06-19), but not the other row with date 2017-06-24. </p>
  
  <p>Is this a simple exercise in SQL?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks! </p>