On this date in history:

In 1818, Illinois was admitted as the 21st state in the United States.

In 1833, Oberlin College in Ohio, the first truly coeducational college in the United States, opened with an enrollment of 29 men and 15 women.

In 1929, the Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from $5 to $7 a day despite the collapse of the U.S. stock market.

In 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant at Cape Town, South Africa.

In 1984, poison gas leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, in the world's worst chemical disaster. Death toll estimates varied widely. Government officials said about 3,000 people died shortly after the leak and many thousands more in the months and years ahead.

In 1992, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize sending a U.S.-led multinational force to Somalia.

In 1997, delegates from 131 countries met in Canada to sign the Convention on the Prohibition, Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines.

In 2006, Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. foreign policy, was re-elected for a third term as president of Venezuela.

In 2009, Comcast, the largest cable operator in the United States, bought 51 percent of NBC Universal from General Electric for $13.75 billion.

In 2012, White House spokesman Jay Carney, commenting on a U.S. warning that Syria must not cross a red line and use chemical weapons, said: The [Bashar] Assad regime must know that the world is watching and that they will be held accountable by the United States and the international community if they use chemical weapons or fail to meet their obligations to secure them.

In 2013, a federal judge ruled that Detroit was eligible for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

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