Tech History Today – Feb. 10

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. But Kasparov took the match 4-2.

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.