Reuters historical calendar - March 31

London, Mar 30 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 31 since 1900: 1917 - The U.S. purchase of the Danish West Indies for million, agreed the previous August, took effect. They were renamed the Virgin Islands.

1959 - The Dalai Lama, fleeing Chinese repression of an uprising in Tibet, arrived at the Indian border and was granted political asylum.

1964 - Brazil's military revolted against the government of President Joao Goulart following a period of economic crisis exacerbated by allegations of official corruption.

1970 - Lesotho's prime minister, Leabua Jonathan, announced that King Moshoeshoe II was leaving the country indefinitely and Queen Mamohato would act as regent.

1971 - U.S. Lieutenant William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment, later reduced to 20 years, for the killings of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in March 1968.

1979 - Britain's military ties with Malta ended after 181 years when the destroyer HMS London left Valletta harbour.

1980 - U.S. athlete Jesse Owens died. He won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics but Hitler refused to shake his hand because he was black.

1983 - An earthquake devastated the Colombian city of Popayan, killing at least 500 people.

1986 - A Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed into a mountainside in central Mexico en route to Los Angeles. All 166 people on board were killed.

1991 - The Warsaw Pact, which held Eastern Europe under tight Kremlin control for 36 years, formally ceased to exist as a military alliance when Soviet commanders surrendered their powers.

1992 - U.N. Security Council Resolution 748 told Libya to surrender two suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing or face a worldwide ban on air travel and arms sales and restrictions on its diplomatic presence.

1993 - The U.N. Security Council authorised military intervention for the first time in the former Yugoslavia, approving use of force to shoot down planes violating a no-fly ban over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1994 - Israel and the PLO signed an agreement to put international observers in the West Bank town of Hebron, the first time Israel had agreed to an international presence in the occupied territories since it captured them in 1967.

2000 - Disgraced Spanish financier Mario Conde was sentenced to 10 years in jail for his part in the 1993 failure of Banesto bank.

2002 - A suicide bomber blew himself up in a busy restaurant in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, killing at least 15 people and injuring 44.

2003 - Mladen Naletilic and Vinko Martinovic, two Bosnian Croats nicknamed ''Tuta'' and ''Stela'', were jailed for 20 years and 18 years respectively for crimes against humanity during a 1993-94 ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia.

**2005 - Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, died 13 days after her tube feeding was halted under orders from a U.S. court.

REUTERS CH DS1425