Reuters historical calendar - March 29
London, Mar 28 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 29 since 1900.
1901 - Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia voted for members of the first Australian parliament.
1912 - English Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott died as his expedition attempted to return after reaching the South Pole.
1972 - J Arthur Rank, a leading architect of Britain's film industry, died. An enthusiastic Methodist, he initially saw films as a means of propagating the Gospel.
1974 - The first close-up pictures of the planet Mercury were taken by the US spacecraft Mariner 10.
1980 - The Anglo-Italian conductor and arranger Annunzio Paolo Mantovani died.
1982 - Carl Orff, German composer of ''Carmina Burana'', died.
1987 - A referendum in Haiti showed overwhelming support for a new constitution.
1992 - Paul Henreid, suave Austrian-born actor of stage and screen who played alongside Bogart and Bergman in ''Casablanca'', died.
1999 - Legendary US jazz and blues singer Joe Williams died aged 80.
2000 - A US Air Force report showed a link between Agent Orange and diabetes in veterans who sprayed the chemical in the Vietnam War.
2001 - A Japanese court overturned the only ruling ever to have ordered compensation for so-called ''comfort women'', forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War Two.
2001 - Syria's parliament unanimously approved a law allowing the establishment of private banks in the country for the first time in nearly four decades.
2004 - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the NATO transatlantic security alliance, increasing its membership to 26.
2005 - An inquiry into the UN's oil-for-food programme concluded that Secretary-General Kofi Annan had not interfered in the awarding of a contract in Iraq to a firm that employed his son.
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