Video: '50th anniversary of first human heart transplant'

(Sunday, December 3, 1967, 2:20-6:45 a.m. SAST) — Surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa, led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first human heart transplant this morning at Groote Schuur Hospital.

Louis Washkansky 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.