Today in history

In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States.

In 1925 “Concerto in F” by George Gershwin had its world premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall, with Gershwin at the piano.

In 1947 the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened on Broadway.

In 1960 the musical “Camelot’’ opened on Broadway.

In 1964 police arrested about 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in.

In 1967 surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart.

In 1979 11 people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, where the rock group The Who was performing.

In 1984 thousands of people died after a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India. (About 4,000 people died within hours of the leak; over the years, according to the Indian government, about 15,000 people have died from effects of the gas.)

In 1994 AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser, who along with her two children were infected with HIV because of a blood transfusion, died in Santa Monica, Calif.; she was 47.

In 1999 scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the Red Planet; the spacecraft is presumed destroyed. Also

in 1999 Oscar-nominated actress Madeline Kahn died; she was 57.

In 2000 poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize, died in Chicago; she was 83.

In 2002 thousands of personnel files released under a court order showed that the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse.

In 2003 a U.N. tribunal convicted and sentenced a radio news director and a newspaper editor to life imprisonment for their role in promoting the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In 2007 British teacher Gillian Gibbons, who was jailed in Sudan for insulting Islam after allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, flew home after being pardoned by the country’s president.

In 2013 a judge sentenced Russian dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko to six years in prison for ordering an acid attack in January that nearly blinded Sergei Filin, artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet.

In 2014 Chicago Public Schools officials unveiled new performance ratings the district said would help educators better identify struggling and unsuccessful schools. Also in 2014 a grand jury opted not to indict a white New York City police officer in the killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, sparking demonstrations in cities across the nation.