December 3

1838: Cleveland Abbe, known as "the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau," was born. 1888: German optician Carl Zeiss, of precision optics fame, died. 1924: American computer scientist John Backus, inverter of the FORTRAN language (FORmula TRANslation), was born. 1942: American physicist Peter Schultz, who is credited for inventing the first commercially viable optical fiber, was born. 1956: The USS Gyatt was recommissioned as the first guided missile destroyer. 1967: Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky, who lived 18 days with the new heart. 1973: Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter in the first fly-by of an outer planet. 1983: Over 40 tons of highly poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked out of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, killing thousands of souls. 1999: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) lost communications with the Mars Polar Lander moments before impact.