It happened on a… May 11

A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency. The coin is known as the euro.

Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, lost his first ever multi-game match. He lost to IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue. It was the first time a computer had beaten a world-champion player.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cats” (based on poetry by T. S. Eliot) directed by Trevor Nunn first premieres in the West End, London.

“The Diamond Sutra”, the world’s oldest surviving and dated printed book is printed in Chinese and made into a scroll.