◆ On this day

December 3

4 sourced moments from December 3 in history: Illinois Joins the Union as the 21st State (1818); The first human-to-human heart transplant was in 1967; The Bhopal gas disaster killed thousands overnight (1984), plus 1 more.

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4 things happened on December 3

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1992 Language & Communication · Media & Communication

The first text message ever sent read: Merry Christmas

In 1992 a 22-year-old engineer typed two words into a computer and accidentally launched the way billions of us would talk.

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1984 Earth & Climate · Natural Disasters

The Bhopal gas disaster killed thousands overnight

A cloud of poison gas drifted over a sleeping Indian city, killing thousands in hours and maiming half a million more.

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1967 Human Body & Mind · Medicine & Disease

The first human-to-human heart transplant was in 1967

Christiaan Barnard's Cape Town team made history on 3 December 1967, though a Mississippi surgeon had put a chimpanzee heart into a man in 1964.

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1818 Geography · Countries

Illinois Joins the Union as the 21st State

On a December day in 1818, a sparsely settled prairie territory crossed the threshold from frontier to fully fledged American state.

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