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19971776 Club

Deep Blue wins the match; Kasparov, never before beaten by a machine, resigns in nineteen moves

The 480-chip IBM supercomputer closes out the six-game rematch in barely an hour, and the reigning world champion immediately accuses the machine's handlers of cheating.

Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion who had never lost a match to a computer, sat down at the board in New York City on May 11, 1997, and lasted nineteen moves. The game took barely more than an hour. His resignation ended a six-game rematch against IBM's Deep Blue — a 480-chip supercomputer capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second — and marked the first time a reigning world champion had lost a match to a machine under standard tournament conditions. What followed was not a quiet handshake: Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, demanded a rematch, and was refused…

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More from May 11
1858

Minnesota enters the Union as the 32nd state; the Dakota name, the French motto, the New England soul

Nine years after Ramsey stepped off a riverboat to govern 5,000 settlers, the eastern half of the old territory takes its place on the map.
1910

Taft signs Glacier into law; a million Montana acres become a national park

George Bird Grinnell, who first rode into the region in 1885 and spent two decades lobbying Congress, calls it "the Crown of the Continent."
1889

Gunmen behind a boulder hit Wham's paymaster convoy; eight Buffalo Soldiers wounded, $28,345 gone

A dozen riflemen firing from pre-built breastworks above an Arizona gorge stripped the Army payroll; Frankie Campbell's horse was still picking around the obstacle when the ambush opened.
19631776 Club
Two blasts hours after the truce agreement; 2,500 fill the streets, businesses burn, and Washington moves toward its first modern military deployment for domestic unrest.
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2001

Atlantis lifts off with Quest airlock; station finally has its own door to open space

Astronauts Gernhardt and Reilly will bolt the 6.5-ton steel-and-aluminum chamber into place across three spacewalks, giving the station a hatch usable by both American and Russian suits.
1995

Discovery lifts off at last; woodpecker damage and a mid-count signal flag had held it back

Six hours after launch, the crew deploys TDRS-G, the last first-generation tracking satellite, raised toward geostationary orbit by the Inertial Upper Stage.
2013

Cassini turns its camera toward Earth; Saturn's shadow makes it possible

Imaging leader Carolyn Porco positioned the spacecraft to catch the sun eclipsed by Saturn, putting Earth in the frame 1.44 billion kilometers away, and millions look up and wave.
1997

Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead

The 1797 frigate moves under her own canvas for the first time in 116 years, on sails paid for through a national campaign of citizen and student donations.
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