Denton Cooley 1960s. He and his colleagues worked on developing new artificial heart valves from 1962 to 1967; during that period, mortality for heart valve transplants fell from 70% to 8%. In 1969, he became the first heart surgeon to implant an artificial heart designed by Domingo Liotta in a man, Haskell Karp, who lived for 65 hours. The next year, in 1970, "he performed the first implantation of an artificial heart in a human when no heart replacement was immediately available." Cooley's interests included basketball, which he played in high school and as a three-year letterman for the UT men's basketball
Ray Liotta knew he was adopted as a young child and did a show-and-tell report on it for kindergarten. Liotta located his biological mother in the 2000s. His parents were of Italian and Scottish ancestry. After research and talks with his biological mother, he learned he was part Scottish. He has one half brother, five half sisters, and a full sister. Liotta was raised Roman Catholic, although his family was not very religious. Liotta said the family went to church and he received first communion and was confirmed, but the family did not pray much. He occasionally uses prayer in his daily