Today in History

Published 1:30 am Saturday, December 3, 2016

Today is Saturday, Dec. 3, the 338th day of 2016. There are 28 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight:

On Dec. 3, 1926, a real-life mystery began as English novelist Agatha Christie, 36, drove away from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, and disappeared. (Christie turned up 11 days later at a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, under an assumed name.)

On this date:

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 donor heart, which came from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old bank clerk who’d died in a traffic accident.

In 1979, 11 people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, where 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.

Today’s Birthdays: Movie director Jean-Luc Godard is 86. Rock singer Ozzy Osbourne is 68. Actress Daryl Hannah is 56. Actress Julianne Moore is 56. Olympic gold medal figure skater Katarina Witt is 51. Actor Brendan Fraser is 48. Singer Montell Jordan is 48. Actress Anna Chlumsky is 36. Actor Brian Bonsall is 35. Actress Amanda Seyfried is 31.

Thought for Today: “What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.” — Pearl Bailey, American entertainer (1918-1990).

Associated Press