Today in History: Monday, December 03, 2012

On Dec. 3, 1984, more than 4,000 people died after a cloud of gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.

1818 Illinois was admitted to the union as the 21st state.

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

1947 "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.

1948 The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.

1964 Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley who had stormed the administration building the previous day and staged a massive sit-in.

1965 The album "Rubber Soul" by the Beatles was released.

1967 Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant.

1967 The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York City to Chicago.

1979 Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum before a rock concert by the Who.

1989 East German Communist leader Egon Krenz, the ruling Politburo and the party's Central Committee resigned.

1997 South Korea struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $55 billion bailout of its foundering economy.

1999 Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet; the spacecraft was presumed destroyed.

2009 Comcast and GE announced joint venture plans, with Comcast owning a 51 percent controlling stake in NBC Universal.