On this day in 1967 Surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. A 53 year old called Lewis Washkansky received the transplant. The donor was Denise Darvall, a 25 year old woman who had been killed in a car crash. After the surgery Washkansky was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the heart. The drugs left him susceptible to sickness and he would die 18 days later from double pneumonia.

Surgeon Barnard died at the age of 78 in 2001.