Today in history:
On May 11, 1997, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the final game of a six-game match in New York, winning the match 3 ½-2 ½ and marking the first time a computer won a match against a reigning chess world champion.
Also on this date:
In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.
In 1946, the first CARE packages, sent by a consortium of American charities to provide relief to the hungry of postwar Europe, arrived at Le Havre, France.
In 1953, one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history devastated the city of Waco, killing 114 people and injuring nearly 600.
In 1960, Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In 1973, the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the “Pentagon Papers” case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct.
In 1981, reggae artist Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital at age 36 of acral lentiginous melanoma.
In 1984, Claus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” went on trial in Lyon for crimes against humanity after being extradited from Bolivia, where he lived for over 30 years after World War II. (Barbie would be found guilty and would die in prison four years later.)
In 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
