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The first human heart transplant
Groote Schuur Hospital · Cape Town, South Africa · 1967-12-03
Christiaan Barnard's team transplanted a heart into Louis Washkansky, who lived eighteen days. The theatre is preserved as a museum.
The record
| Date | 1967-12-03 |
|---|---|
| Place | Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa |
| Coordinates | -33.94, 18.465 (landmark-level precision) |
| Scope | World-historic |
| Sources | Wikipedia |
| Added | 2026-08-14 · source: editors |
Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.
Finding photographs
Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
- The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
- Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
- National and municipal archives of South Africa, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.
Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.
Footage
Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.
Time layers within the surrounding city
One place, several moments in time. This location has 2 recorded time layers between 1967 and 1972 — slide through them:
- 1967 — The first human heart transplant this page
- 1972 — Athlone Stadium
Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.
You can add to this page
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What readers have added
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Nearby in Africa
- Athlone Stadium (1972)
- Cell 5, B Section, Robben Island (1964)Cape Town
- Mandela walks out of Victor Verster (1990)Paarl
- Afrikaans Language Monument (1975)
- EPRU Stadium (1957)
- South African Airways Flight 406 (1967)