First time I saw one in the wild was in Colas Nahaboo's LISP wm. (I think) -Written at INRIA for early X10/X11 systems.

I hated it. In general, there's a very strong "Principle of Least Astonishment" about menus. If you can do it down low in the entire stack, Great. If this one app does it, and nothing else, its .. awful.

I also want to say unkind things about CHI. I think they set off down many roads with good intent, but also kicked a lot of dust up into the streetscape and wound up popularising some very bad ideas. Remember, it was CHI people who proposed re-sorting menu order to reflect "the most common choices" rather than maintain consistency of placement of menu items. It was CHI people who took us down into Skeuomorphism, back out, into material design, and now we live in a world where it can be virtually impossible to predict ab initio which things you see on a screen are clickable, touchable, reacting.

Not that I wouldnt have gladly marched down those roads, had I not fallen into another path of work.