Today’s highlights
Today is Sunday, Dec. 3, the 337th day of 2017. There are 28 days left in the year.
On Dec. 3, 1967, a surgical team 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 donor organ, which came from Denise Darvall, a 25-year- old bank clerk who had died in a traffic accident. The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York to Chicago after 65 years of service.
On this date
In 1818, Illinois was admitted as the 21st state.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States by the Electoral College.
In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio — the first truly coeducational school of higher learning in the United States — began holding classes.
In 1925, George Gershwin’s Concerto in F had its world premiere at New York’s Carnegie Hall, with Gershwin at the piano.
In 1926, English mystery writer Agatha Christie, 36, disappeared after driving away from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire. (Christie turned up 11 days later at a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire.)
In 1947, the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened on Broadway.
In 1953, the musical “Kismet,” featuring the song “Stranger in Paradise,” opened on Broadway.
In 1960, the Lerner and Loewe musical “Camelot” opened on Broadway.
In 1965, the Beatles’ sixth studio album, “Rubber Soul,” was released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone (it was released in the U.S. by Capitol Records three days later).
In 1979, 11 people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, where the British 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.
In 1992, the first telephone text message was sent by British engineer Neil Papworth, who transmitted the greeting “Merry Christmas” from his work computer in Newbury, Berkshire, to Vodafone executive Richard Jarvis’ mobile phone. The Greek tanker Aegean Sea spilled more than 21 million gallons of crude oil when it ran aground off northwestern Spain.
Ten years ago: A U.S. intelligence report concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but was continuing to enrich uranium. British teacher Gillian Gibbons, 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. Former commissioner Bowie Kuhn (BOO’ee kyoon) was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; former Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth and ex-Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss also were elected.
Five years ago: The White House rejected a $2.2 trillion proposal by House Republicans to avert the “fiscal cliff,” a plan that included $800 billion in higher tax revenue over 10 years but no increase in tax rates for the wealthy. St. James’s Palace announced that Britain’s Prince William and his wife, Kate, were expecting their first child (Prince George was born the following July).