When was the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves?

LIGO detected gravitational waves for the first time on 14 September 2015, and the discovery was announced in February 2016. The signal, called GW150914, came from the merger of two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away. It confirmed a key prediction of Einstein’s general relativity made a century earlier. The finding opened a new way of observing the universe, using ripples in spacetime rather than light.