On this day: February 19
POSTED: 04:31 PM PST Feb 18, 2013
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Feb 18, 2013
Rescuers reach the Donner Party, Edison patents the phonograph, the Soviet Union launches the Mir space station, and Fidel Castro resigns as Cuban president, all on this day.
NIH photographic archives
1985: Artificial heart recipient William J. Schroeder becomes the first such patient to leave hospital. After having the transplant on Nov. 25, 1984, at Humana Heart Institute International in Louisville, Ky., he would end up living for 620 days with the artificial heart before dying from a series of strokes.
