Way back when: Today in history
BY GENE CURTIS
Sunday, January 06, 2013
1/06/13 at 2:38 AM
1967 - Crash kills 84
Two of 57 buses loaded with Roman Catholic pilgrims headed to a shrine to celebrate an annual feast day collided on a mountain road in the Philippines and plunged off a cliff, killing 84 and injuring 140. Investigators said one of the buses went out of control when its brakes failed and rammed the bus ahead. Both careened into the 300-foot-deep ravine beside the road.
1968 - Heart transplanted
The first heart transplant on an adult patient in the U.S. was performed by Dr. Norman Shumway at Stanford University Hospital on a 54-year-old steelworker whose heart condition had forced his retirement 18 months earlier. Mike Kasperak, the heart recipient, lived for 14 days after receiving the heart from a 43-year-old housewife who had died of a stroke about two hours before the surgery. The only previous heart transplant in the U.S. was in New York City on Dec. 6 when the heart of a two-day-old infant was placed in a 2 1/2-week-old boy. The baby lived only six hours after the surgery. Thousands of heart transplants have been performed since.
1993 - Stranded couple rescued
A young couple and their 5-month-old baby were rescued more than a week after being stranded on a desolate Nevada road by a blizzard - the woman from a cave where she took refuge with her son; the man about 25 miles away while trudging through deep snow looking for help for his family. Army Pvt. James Stolpa, 21, was found by a road crew and was able to direct searchers to the cave where his wife, Jennifer, 20, and their nursing son, Clayton, were trying to stay warm in temperatures that had ranged from 4 to 42 degrees during the week. They became stranded while en route to a funeral in Idaho from Camp Roberts in northern California. The adults lost their toes to frostbite but the baby was not injured.
1998 - Mermaid beheaded
Vandals decapitated the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, a favorite spot for tourists to pose for pictures - the second time in 33 years. The bronze statue of a mermaid gazing out to sea, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, is one of Copenhagen's top tourist draws. The vandals were never found but the head was returned to a Copenhagen television station and was reattached.
Associated Images:
A diver prepares to search for the Little Mermaid's head in Copenhagen. AP file
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