Reuters historical calendar - May 24

London, May 23 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 24 since 1900: 1930 - Amy Johnson landed her Gypsy Moth plane at Darwin in northern Australia, the first woman to fly solo from England.

1941 - The British cruiser Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in World War Two. More than 1,300 died.

1962 - Malcolm Scott Carpenter completed the second U.S.

manned orbital space flight, when his Aurora 7 craft splashed down after three trips around the Earth.

1964 - More than 300 people died during a riot at a soccer match in Peru after the referee disallowed a goal.

1968 - In the continuing student and labour unrest in France, President Charles de Gaulle proposed a referendum and rioting students set fire to the Paris stock exchange.

1974 - The U.S. jazz pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington died.

1976 - The British and French Concordes made their first commercial flights, from London and Paris respectively, to Washington Dulles International Airport in just under four hours.

1977 - Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny was dropped from the ruling Politburo.

1981 - President Jaime Roldos Aguilera of Ecuador died in an air crash.

1982 - In the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian troops recaptured Khorramshahr after it had been occupied by Iraq for 20 months.

1993 - Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after a 30-year civil war.

1994 - About 270 Muslims performing the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca were killed in a stampede.

1998 - Hong Kong's pro-democracy parties swept to victory in the first legislative election under Chinese rule.

1999 - South Australian police found 11 decomposing bodies in a disused bank vault and a backyard in the nation's worst serial killing.

2000 - Israel ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in a rushed evacuation after the collapse of its local militia the previous day.

2001 - Twenty-three people were killed and more than 300 injured when a wedding hall collapsed in Jerusalem -- the worst civil disaster in modern Israeli history.

2002 - Pope John Paul accepted the resignation of Milwaukee's Roman Catholic archbishop, Rembert Weakland, who was accused of attempted sexual assault.

2002 - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Bush signed a landmark treaty to slash their long-range nuclear warheads by two-thirds.

2005 - The 100 millionth Volkswagen rolled off a German assembly line, taking the brand into an elite list of four car companies, including Ford, Toyota and Chevrolet, whose output had stretched into nine digits.

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