Discover fascinating events that happened on 11th May history —from Garry Kasparov’s defeat by IBM’s Deep Blue to India’s nuclear tests in Pokhran. A daily dose of history curated specially for students.
Dear Students,
Many of you have started reading this series that I share with you on the history of the day. I try to include events that you might find interesting. For instance, did you know that on the 11th of May 1997, Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster, was actually defeated by… any guesses?
Well, it was a computer named Deep Blue, which was researched and developed by IBM. This marked a significant development in Artificial Intelligence and represented a moment when human intellectual prowess in the realm of chess was surpassed by a machine. Interesting, isn’t it?
Besides, did you know…
1) On the 11th of May in the year 868, the oldest printed book, The Diamond Sutra, was turned into a scroll?
2) Many of you may have heard of Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria, but do you know that the first Queen of England was Matilda of Flanders, who was crowned on the 11th of May, 1068? She was the wife of William the Conqueror and the Duchess of Normandy.
3) Did you know that the earliest known performance of William Shakespeare’s comedy The Winter’s Tale was staged on the 11th of May, 1611, at the Globe Theatre in London?
4) Did you know that it was on the 11th of May, 1812, that the dance form Waltz was first introduced in English ballrooms? Some observers at the time considered it disgusting and immoral, but with time, the Waltz has become one of the most popular dance forms in the world.
5) You know about Charles Darwin, don’t you? But do you know that HMS Beagle, the ship that took him on his famous scientific voyage, was launched on the 11th of May in 1820?
6) How many of you ride bicycles? Perhaps many of you do. Well, it was on this day in 1893 that Henri Desgrange established the world’s first bicycle world record, travelling 35.325 km (21.95 miles) in just an hour.
7) Television is one of the major sources of entertainment, but did you know that it was on the 11th of May, 1928, that the first-ever television station was opened by General Electric in Schenectady, New York?
8) The 11th of May was also an important date in literature, as it was on this day in 1942 that “Go Down, Moses”, a collection of short stories by William Faulkner, was published.
9) The 11th of May, 1998, was the day when India conducted three underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, Rajasthan, including a thermonuclear device, under the leadership of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
10) And finally, it was on this day in the year 2012 that a Chinese scientist broke the world record by transferring photons over 97 kilometres using quantum teleportation.
So, that’s all for today. Take care and, most importantly, enjoy!
