This Day In History: December 3

1818 - Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the union.

1828 - Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States.

1835 - In Rhode Island, the Manufacturer Mutual Fire Insurance Company issued the first fire insurance policy.

1910 - The neon lamp was displayed for the first time at the Paris Motor Show. The lamp was developed by French physicist Georges Claude.

1931 - Alka Seltzer was sold for the first time.

1947 - The Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theater.

1948 - The "Pumpkin Papers" came to public light. The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.

1950 - Paul Harvey began his national radio broadcast.

1964 - Police arrested about 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley. The arrest took place one day after the students staged a massive sit-in inside an administration building.

1967 - In Cape Town, South Africa, a team of surgeons headed by Dr. Christian Barnard, performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky. Washkansky only lived 18 days.

1973 - Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. The first outer-planetary probe had been launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on March 2, 1972.

1980 - U.S. Representatives Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-NJ) and John Murphy (D-NY) were convicted on Abscam charges.

1984 - In Bhopal, India, more than 2,000 people were killed after a cloud of poisonous gas escaped from a pesticide plant. The plant was operated by a Union Carbide subsidiary.

1987 - U.S. President Reagan said there was a good chance of progress toward a treaty on long-range weapons with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

1988 - Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State University won the Heisman Trophy.

1990 - A collision, on the ground, of a Northwest Airlines DC-9 and a Northwest Boeing 727 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, resulted in a fire that claimed eight lives.

1991 - After nearly five years, Shiite Muslim radicals in Lebanon released American hostage Allen Sutten.

1992 - The UN Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-led military mission to help starving Somalians.

1992 - The Greek tanker "Aegean Sea" ran aground at La Coruna, Spain and spilled 21.5 million gallons of crude oil.

1993 - Britain's Princess Diana announced she would be limiting her public appearances because she was tired of the media's intrusions into her life.

1994 - AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser died at the age 47. She and her two children were infected with HIV because of a blood transfusion.

1995 - Former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan was arrested for his role in a 1979 coup.

1997 - Pierce Brosnan received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1997 - In Ottawa, Canada, more than 120 countries were represented to sign a treaty prohibiting the use and production of anti-personnel land mines. The United States, China and Russia did not sign the treaty.

1999 - Tori Murden became the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean alone. It took her 81 days to reach the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.

1999 - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) lost radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander as it entered Mars' atmosphere. The spacecraft was unmanned.