Reuters historical calendar - March 21

LONDON, Mar 20 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 21 in history: 1917 - Russian revolutionary forces arrested Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

1918 - The Second Battle of the Somme, the last German offensive in World War One, began.

1952 - Dr Kwame Nkrumah became prime minister of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, the first African to be elected prime minister south of the Sahara.

1960 - South African police fired on peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville in the Transvaal, killing 69 unarmed black protesters.

1963 - Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closed when the last 27 prisoners were transferred.

1965 - Dr Martin Luther King Jr led the start of a 4,000-strong civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1989 - Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke wept on television as he admitted to having an extramarital affair.

1990 - Namibia, formerly known as South West Africa, became independent after 75 years of South African rule.

2000 - Taiwan's parliament voted to drop a 50-year ban on direct trade, transport and postal links with mainland China.

2003 - Eight British soldiers and four US airmen were killed in a helicopter crash on the Iraqi border, the first known allied casualties of the Iraq war.

2004 - Afghanistan's civil aviation minister Mirwais Sadiq, son of the powerful governor of Herat province, was killed in an ambush in Herat.

2005 - A US high school student shot dead nine and then killed himself at Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation in the worst school shooting since 1999.

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