Reuters historical calendar - April 11

London, Apr 10 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 11 since 1900: 1913 - French pilot Gustave Hamel flew the English Channel from Dunkirk to Dover and back in 90 minutes, then a record.

1945 - American troops captured the German cities of Essen and Weimar in the closing stages of World War Two and liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951 - President Harry S Truman stripped General Douglas MacArthur of all his posts including that of U.N. Forces Commander in Korea for making critical political statements.

1952 - The Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) seized power in Bolivia in a bloody coup.

1957 - Singapore was granted self-government by Britain.

1961 - Former Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem for his part in the Holocaust. He was later hanged.

1970 - The US spacecraft Apollo 13 lifted off on its ill-fated journey to the moon. Forced to turn back due to an explosion, it landed safely on April 17 after days of tension.

1979 - The Ugandan capital Kampala fell to a combined force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian troops, ending the eight-year rule of Idi Amin, who fled to Libya.

1982 - The Britons Ranulph Fiennes and Charles Burton completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth via the poles.

1984 - The first baby to be born from a frozen embryo was delivered in a hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

1987 - The Italian Primo Levi, best known for his book ''If This is a Man'' about his time in Auschwitz, committed suicide.

1994 - Communists and their allies outpolled nationalist rivals in Ukraine's first post-Soviet general election, taking nearly a quarter of the seats.

2000 - South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje admitted taking money from an Indian bookmaker.

2001 - The Welsh comedian and singer Harry Secombe died.

2002 - A truck bomb near the ancient El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba killed 21 people including 14 Germans.

2003 - US and Kurdish forces took Iraq's third city of Mosul without a fight, sealing victory in the north.

2004 - Pope John Paul II made an unexpected appeal for Christian unity as the Western (Roman Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches unusually celebrated Easter on the same day.

2005 - Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, Somalia, Kenya and Rwanda signed an agreement to create a 3,000-strong standby brigade, the African Standby Force, to intervene in crises.

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