The first program of VOA was broadcast in ______.

The United States government established the Voice of America during World War II. The first radio broadcast was in a language no longer heard on VOA. It was a fifteen-minute program in Ger- man. It aired on February twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-two. It told the German people that every day VOA would broadcast news of America and the war. The news the announcer said may be good or bad, but we will tell you the truth.
   Today, VOA broadcasts more than one thousand hours of radio programs each week in forty- four languages. VOA also has television programs in English and a number of other languages. These include Albanian, Cantonese, French, Indonesian, Mandarin and Persian. And VOA uses more than fourteen thousand computer servers around the world to put information on the Internet.
   VOA has three main duties under a Charter signed into law in nineteen seventy-six. One is to report the news fairly. Another is to tell about America and its people. The third duty is to present the policies of the government as well as opinions about those policies.
   When VOA began, all broadcasts were on shortwave. Today many local radio stations around the world carry VOA programs. It is estimated that VOA reaches more than one hundred million people each week through radio, television and the Internet.
   More than ten million individuals visited the VOA website last year. We are happy to report that Special English is the third most popular page after the VOA home page and standard English.