In 1958 – Scientists at Lincoln Laboratory at MIT bounced radar signals off the planet Venus, calling it the first measurement of interplanetary distances.
In 1996 – Chess’s international grandmaster Garry Kasparov began a six game match against IBM’s Deep Blue. Deep Blue won the first game, the first time that a current world champion had ever been beaten by a computer opponent under regular tournament conditions.
In 2009 – One of Motorola’s communication satellites Iridium 33 collided with defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 destroying both. It was an unprecedented space collision.
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