This Day in History: February 17th

Here’s a brief look back in time on this day, February 17th.

In 1801, Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father and primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence, is elected as the 3rd president of the United States. He dominated 62.5 percent of the vote over Aaron Burr’s 25%. This was back when there were only 16 territories that acquired statehood in the then recently-founded United States.

In 1947, the Voice of America, which is a U.S. government-funded conglomerate of radio stations, sends its first broadcast to the Soviet Union. Originally created as a morale booster for American troops during World War II, it began airing regular news updates and music programs to give Russians an idea of what life is like outside the USSR. Today, it provides the same programming in around 50 different languages to hundreds of countries. Its first words? A simple “hello” from New York.

In 1996, Azerbaijani chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov wins against one of his most challenging competitors with a score of 4-2. His rival? A computer. A brain child of IBM engineers, the computer – coined as “Deep Blue” – had been in development over the course of a decade. Its sole purpose is to compete against Kasparov in highly publicized chess matches to prove how intelligent a computer can get. After years of defeat, Deep Blue would achieve this the following year with a score of 3.5 over Kasparov’s 2.5.