Reuters historical calendar - March 7

London, Mar 6 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 7 since 1900: 1917 - The world's first jazz record, ''The Dixie Jazz Band One Step'', recorded by Nick LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jazz Band, was released by RCA Victor in Camden, NJ.

1932 - French Prime Minister Aristide Briand, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, died. He pioneered the idea of a United States of Europe.

1936 - Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by re-occupying the Rhineland demilitarised zone.

1942 - The British evacuated Rangoon during World War Two.

The Japanese entered the city the next day.

1945 - The US 9th Armoured Division captured the key bridge over the Rhine at Remagen in Germany, which helped shorten World War Two.

1951 - Iranian Prime Minister Ali Razmara was assassinated by a religious fanatic in a mosque in Tehran.

1973 - The government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won a landslide victory in Bangladesh's first general election.

1989 - Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses''.

1994 - African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela rejected a demand by white right-wingers for a separate homeland in South Africa, saying it would never happen in his lifetime.

1998 - A military appeal court sentenced former SS captain Erich Priebke to life imprisonment for his role in Italy's worst World War Two atrocity, the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves.

1999 - Stanley Kubrick, film director of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' and ''A Clockwork Orange'', died aged 70.

2001 - US drugmaker Merck said it would cut the price of two AIDS drugs in developing countries and make no profit on their sale.

2002 - Irish voters defeated the government and Roman Catholic Church in a referendum proposal to eliminate a loophole in Ireland's tough laws against abortion.

2003 - Svetozar Marovic, deputy head of Montenegro's Democratic Party of Socialists, was elected by the parliaments of Serbia and Montenegro as the new union's first president.

2004 - In Madagascar, the Samson, a ferry cruising 90 miles north of Mahajanga, sank during Cyclone Gafilo, killing at least 115 people.

2004 - The Rev Canon V Gene Robinson became the ninth bishop of New Hampshire, four months after his installation as the first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church.

**2005 - A fire swept through an overcrowded Dominican Republic prison in the eastern city of Higuey following a fight between rival gangs, killing 133 inmates.

REUTERS OM BS1606