Reuters historical calendar - April 27

LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 27 in history: 1909 - A group called the Young Turks deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid three days after a liberation army had taken Constantinople.

1941 - German tanks rolled into Athens in World War Two.

1945 - Allies rejected peace offers by German SS chief Heinrich Himmler, insisting on unconditional surrender.

1950 - Britain recognised the newly founded state of Israel.

1950 - Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies introduced a bill to outlaw the Communist Party.

1956 - Rocky Marciano retired as undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion.

1960 - The French-administered U.N. Trust Territory of Togoland gained independence as the Republic of Togo.

1961 - Sierra Leone gained independence within the Commonwealth from Great Britain and parliament held its first session with Sir Milton Margai as prime minister.

1969 - Bolivian President Rene Barrientos Ortuno was killed in a helicopter crash near the village of Arque. He had been president since 1964.

1972 - Kwame Nkrumah, former Ghanaian prime minister and president from 1960, died in Bucharest.

1978 - Afghanistan's armed forces seized power, establishing a government based on Islamic principles. President Daoud was killed and new President Nur Mohammed Taraki proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

1990 - Joe Slovo, South African Communist leader, returned home to join peace talks after 27 years in exile.

1992 - A Zambian air force plane carrying Zambia's national football team crashed into the Atlantic off Gabon, killing all 30 aboard.

1992 - Russia and most of the other former Soviet republics were welcomed into the free-market fold as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank approved them for membership.

1993 - Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia after 30 years of civil war following a U.N.-monitored referendum.

1997 - Hong Kong officially opened the world's longest road-rail suspension bridge, linking the colony to its new offshore airport.

1998 - Nguyen Van Linh, former general secretary of the Vietnam Communist Party, died.

2001 - Russia signed an agreement with North Korea to upgrade weapons it had supplied during the Soviet era.

2002 - Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, a German-Hungarian aristocrat and industrial magnate who used his multi-billion dollar fortune to amass one of the world's finest private art collections, died. He was 81.

2003 - Nicanor Duarte Frutos won Paraguay's presidency in a vote extending his Colorado party's reign as the world's longest-serving political force still in power.

2004 - African National Congress' Thabo Mbeki was inaugurated for a second term as South Africa's president 10 years after its first all-race elections and the end of apartheid.

2005 - The world's biggest airliner, the European Airbus A380, flew for the first time. As long as eight London buses and with enough room on its wings to park 70 cars, the double-decker plane with room for more than 800 ended the four-decade reign of Boeing's 747 jumbo as the biggest airliner to have flown.

REUTERS KD PM1114