Reuters historical calendar - April 13

London, April 12 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 13 since 1900: 1913 - An assassination attempt on King Alfonso XIII of Spain by an anarchist failed.

1919 - In Amritsar, British troops shot dead 379 Indians protesting at the arrest of two Congress Party leaders.

1932 - The German government banned the Nazi paramilitary groups SS and SA.

1935 - A London to Australia airline service was launched by the Imperial Airways and Qantas.

1941 - Russia and Japan signed a five-year pact of neutrality in World War Two.

1945 - Vienna, the first foreign capital to be occupied by Hitler, was liberated by Soviet troops.

1945 - Massive firebombing raids by Allied bombers destroyed a large part of Tokyo.

1954 - In British Guiana, former Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan was jailed for six months. He had won the 1953 election but the governor dismissed him because of his ''communist policies''.

1964 - Winston Field resigned as premier of Southern Rhodesia and was succeeded by Ian Smith.

1964 - Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win an Oscar, taking the best actor award for ''Lilies of the Field''.

1966 - Abdul Salam Arif, president of Iraq, was killed in a helicopter crash.

1968 - Tanzania became the first country to recognise the Nigerian secessionist state of Biafra as a sovereign nation.

1975 - A military coup in Chad overthrew President Ngarta Tombalbaye, who was killed. Felix Malloum took over at the head of a seven-member junta.

1975 - Christian militiamen in Lebanon killed 22 Palestinians on a bus in the Ain er-Rummaineh suburb of Beirut.

This attack is seen as the starting point of the Lebanese civil war.

1990 - The Soviet Union admitted for the first time that it was responsible for the 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, Poland.

1994 - Belgian paratroopers evacuated the last foreigners from Kigali as rebels tightened their grip around the Rwandan capital ravaged by days of bloodshed.

1999 - Willi Stoph, twice prime minister of the former German Democratic Republic (1964-73 and 1976-89), died aged 84.

1999 - A U.S. judge sentenced assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian to 10-25 years in prison following his second-degree murder conviction.

2002 - Around 2,500 Irish Republicans gathered in Dublin to commemorate members of the IRA and its political wing Sinn Fein killed in Northern Ireland's conflict over British rule.

2002 - Former Serbian Interior Minister and accused war criminal Vlajko Stojiljkovic died two days after he shot himself outside the Yugoslav parliament, hours after it passed a law to send him and other suspects to a U.N. court.

2003 - Nepal freed two top jailed Maoist leaders, meeting a key rebel condition for the start of peace talks towards ending a revolt that has killed more than 7,200 people.

2005 - U.S. Episcopal bishops, fighting fallout from their consecration of the church's first openly gay bishop, withdrew from the Anglican Consultative Council.

REUTERS KD SP1116