- 1854 German-American engineer Ottmar Mergenthaler born; invented the Linotype typesetting machine (1886), ushering in the second printing revolution.
- 1881 Hungarian-American physicist Theodore Von Kármán born; Martian; a founder of JPL; extensive contributions to understanding transsonic and supersonic flow, turbulence, laminar flow stability, boundary layers; the Von Karman vortex street; Cal Tech's Von Kármán Laboratory for Fluid Mechanics and Jet Propulsion; Cal Tech's Von Kármán Lecture Series; craters named for Von Kármán on both Mars and the Moon.
- 1888 American songwriter Irving Berlin born; wrote "God Bless America," Oscar for "White Christmas," "Anything You Can Do," "This Is the Army," "There's No Business Like Show Business", "Blue Skies," "Cheek to Cheek," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "Steppin' Out With My Baby".
- 1918 American physicist Richard Feynman born; 1965 Nobel (with Julian Schwinger and Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga), for independently discovering effective computational techniques (Feynman diagrams) for quantum electrodynamics.
- 1997 IBM's Deep Blue chess-specific supercomputer becomes the world's strongest chess "player", defeating world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the last game of their rematch.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Today in History: May 11
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