Reuters historical calendar - April 2

London, Apr 1 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 2 since 1900: 1905 - The Simplon rail tunnel under the Alps linking Switzerland with Italy officially opened.

1947 - The U.N. Security Council voted to appoint the United States as trustee for formerly Japanese-held Pacific islands.

1960 - France signed an agreement with Madagascar which proclaimed the island an independent state within the French community.

1966 - Cecil Scott Forester, author of the Captain Hornblower novels, died. He also wrote ''The African Queen'', which was made into a hugely successful film.

1974 - French president Georges Pompidou died in office.

1982 - Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and overthrew the British administration. The protectorate had been held by Britain since 1832.

1990 - President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with advanced chemical weapons if it joined what he called a big-power conspiracy against Iraq.

1991 - Price rises of up to 200 per cent for basic goods and public transport went into effect throughout the Soviet Union.

1992 - Mafia boss John Gotti, nicknamed ''Teflon Don'' after earlier attempts to try him, was convicted of murder and racketeering in New York.

1998 - Maurice Papon, an official in collaborationist Vichy France, was convicted of arresting Jews to be sent to Nazi death camps in 1942-1944 when he was secretary-general of the Bordeaux prefect's office.

2000 - Tommaso Buscetta, the first Mafia boss to turn his back on Sicily's notorious Cosa Nostra and tell its secrets to investigators, died at 71.

2001 - Officials at Merck&Co. Inc. said that an experimental AIDS vaccine forged from the virus that causes the common cold, blocked the disease from developing into its full-blown stage in laboratory monkeys.

2004 - NATO expanded to 26 members when former communist countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the organisation.

2005 - Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who headed the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years and played a crucial role in the fall of communism in Europe, died. He was 84.

REUTERS PG DS1103