Today is Saturday, Dec. 3, the 338th day of 2016. There are 28 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Dec. 3, 1926, a real-life mystery began as English novelist Agatha Christie, 36, drove away from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, and disappeared. (Christie turned up 11 days later at a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, under an assumed name, for reasons never quite explained.)
On this date:
In 1818, Illinois was admitted as the 21st state.
In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States by the Electoral College.
In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio - the first truly coeducational school of higher learning in the United States - began holding classes.
In 1925, George Gershwin's Concerto in F had its world premiere at New York's Carnegie Hall, with Gershwin at the piano.
In 1947, the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway.
In 1953, the musical "Kismet," featuring the song "Stranger in Paradise," opened on Broadway.
In 1960, the Lerner and Loewe musical "Camelot" opened on Broadway.
In 1965, The Beatles' sixth studio album, "Rubber Soul," was released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone (it was released in the U.S. by Capitol Records three days later).
In 1967, surgeons in Cape Town, South Africa led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who 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. The 20th Century Limited, the famed luxury train, completed its final run from New York to Chicago.
In 1979, 11 people were killed in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum, where the British rock group The Who was performing.
In 1984, thousands of people died after a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas escaped from a pesticide plant operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, India.
In 1991, radicals in Lebanon released American hostage Alann (cq) Steen, who'd been held captive nearly five years.