On this day: December 3
POSTED: 08:34 PM PST Dec 02, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Dec 02, 2012
Laurel and Hardy team up, a human heart is transplanted for the first time, an assassin targets Bob Marley, and the first text message is sent via phone, all on this day.
Groote Schuur Hospital
1967: In Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, with his team of 20 surgeons, performed the first human heart transplant, on 54-year-old South African businessman Louis Washkansky. The patient would last only 18 days before succumbing to double pneumonia, contracted after destruction of his body's immunity mechanism by drugs administered to suppress rejection of the new heart. However, the next patient, Philip Blaiberg, lived for nearly two years. Since then, many thousands of human heart transplants have been performed.
