Reference an Element in a List of Tuples

Sorry in advance, but I'm new to Python. I have a list of tuples, and I was wondering how I can reference, say, the first element of each tuple within the list. I would think it's something like

for i in number_of_tuples :
  first_element = myList[i[0]]

you know, [list_element[tuple_element]]? However, this doesn't appear to be the right approach. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Turner