On this day: December 6
POSTED: 09:00 PM PST Dec 05, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Dec 05, 2012
Harriet Tubman escapes slavery, the capstone is set on the Washington Monument, the TV special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" debuts, and Roy Orbison passes away, all on this day.
National Library of Medicine
1967: Adrian Kantrowitz (right) performs the first human heart transplant in the United States at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., removing the heart of a brain-dead baby and implanting it into the chest of a 19-day-old infant who had a heart defect that would have been fatal. The recipient lived for a little more than six hours after the surgery. It was only the second time that a human heart had been transplanted into another human being, taking place just three days after Christiaan Barnard's seminal attempt in South Africa.
