Reuters historical calendar - June 1

London, May 31 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 1 since 1900: 1932 - Franz von Papen became German Chancellor following the resignation of Heinrich Bruening on May 30. He was later instrumental in persuading President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

1941 - British forces entered Baghdad returning the regent of six-year-old King Faisal of Iraq to power.

1958 - General Charles de Gaulle became prime minister of France at the head of an emergency government after a crisis in French-ruled Algeria.

1968 - Helen Keller, US author, died. Deaf and blind from 19 months, she learned to communicate through language from the age of seven and went on to publish several books based on her experience notably ''The Story of my Life'' (1902).

1973 - Greece's military government announced the abolition of the monarchy and proclaimed a republic.

1990 - US President George Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed a bilateral agreement to stop producing chemical arms and to begin destroying stocks by the end of 1992.

1996 - Ukraine became a nuclear weapons-free nation with the transfer of the last of its warheads to Russia.

2001 - Nepal's King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and six other family members were killed in a palace massacre by their son Crown Prince Dipendra, who then turned a gun on himself.

2002 - Disgraced former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje was killed when the plane he was travelling in crashed in mountains in Western Cape province.

2003 - China blocked the Yangtze River, closing the gates on the Three Gorges dam, to fill the 600-km (365-mile) reservoir in the world's largest hydroelectric project.

2004 - The Iraqi Governing Council was dissolved and an interim government under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was appointed to prepare Iraq for general elections.

2005 - The Netherlands rejected the European Union constitution in a referendum, dealing a body blow to a treaty already spurned by France.

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