On this day: November 29
Edison shows off his phonograph, atom bomb testing heads underground, a chimpanzee orbits the Earth, the Pong craze begins, and the world loses another Beatle, all on this day.
1944: The first surgery on a human to correct "blue baby" syndrome is performed at Johns Hopkins University by chief surgeon Alfred Blalock, pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig and lab technician Vivien Thomas. The Blalock-Taussig shunt procedure joins an artery leaving the heart to an artery leading to the lungs, in an attempt to give the blood a second chance at oxygenation. Thousands of cyanotic children would be helped by the operation until later surgeries repair the heart defect itself.
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