December 03: Fun Facts about Today in History

(December 03, 1818)
Illinois became the United States of America's twenty-first state. photo source: wikimedia.org

(December 03, 1967)
A transplant team led by Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, performs the first human heart transplant (53-year-old Louis Washkansky). photo source: wikimedia.org

(December 03, 1984)
In one of the greatest industrial catastrophes in history, a methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills about 3,800 people and injures 150,000–600,000 more (some 6,000 of whom ultimately died from their injuries). photo source: wikimedia.org

(December 03, 2014)
Japan's space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round-trip mission to collect rock samples from an asteroid. photo source: wikimedia.org

(Died on December 03, 2016)
Arthur Latham, British politician and Member of Parliament (b. 1930).