Reuters historical calendar - June 6

LONDON, June 5 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 6 since 1900: 1933 - The first drive-in cinema opened in Camden, New Jersey with a showing of ''Wife Beware''. The cinema had room for 400 cars.

1934 - The US Securities and Exchange Commission was established to protect the interests of investors.

1941 - Louis Chevrolet, American car racer and designer, died.

1944 - Operation Overlord, the landing of Allied forces on the coast of Normandy, France, took place. It was the largest sea-borne invasion in history and was better known as ''D-Day''.

1949 - ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', George Orwell's vision of a World ruled by Big Brother, was published.

1954 - Eurovision, a network created by linking television stations across Europe, made its first broadcast -- from the Festival of Flowers in Switzerland.

1961 - Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, died.

1966 - The US Gemini 9 spacecraft splashed down after a three-day mission during which astronaut Eugene Cernan walked in space for a record two hours eight minutes.

1972 - An underground explosion at the Wankie colliery in Rhodesia killed 427 miners.

1976 - US billionaire J Paul Getty died. He amassed one of the world's largest private fortunes through the oil business.

1981 - In one of the world's worst rail disasters, seven coaches of a passenger train were blown off the tracks into the River Kosi, in Bihar, India. At least 800 people were killed.

1982 - Serious fighting between Israeli and Syrian troops broke out as Israel began a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.

1984 - Indian troops stormed the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikh's holiest shrine, killing an estimated 1,000 people.

1994 - A Chinese airliner on a domestic flight from the tourist centre of Xian crashed killing all 160 people on board.

1995 - South Africa abolished the death penalty.

1997 - Caoimhghin O Caolain won a seat in Ireland's election becoming the first member of Sinn Fein, political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrilla group, to enter Ireland's parliament.

2001 - A smoker with incurable lung and brain cancer was awarded 3 billion dollars in damages by a jury which ruled that Philip Morris did not properly warn him of the risks. It was the largest individual punitive damage award ever against a tobacco company.

2001 - Marie Bremont, a French woman, believed to be the world's oldest person, died in her sleep at the age of 115.

2003 - The UN signed a landmark agreement with Cambodia to set up special courts to try the leaders of the 1970s ''Killing Fields'' genocide of the Khmer Rouge.

2004 - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited Normandy marking D-Day celebrations and joining Germany's former World War Two enemies for the first time in the tribute to those killed on both sides during the conflict.

**2005 - Britain shelved plans to hold a referendum on the European Union's troubled constitution, dealing another blow to a treaty already rejected by French and Dutch voters.

**2005 - Bolivian President Carlos Mesa resigned after weeks of crippling protests by indigenous leaders demanding that he nationalise the country's energy resources.

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