Reuters historical calendar - June 25

London, June 24 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 25 since 1900: 1910 - US Congress passed the White Slavery Act (or Mann Act), outlawing the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes.

1940 - In World War Two, hostilities in France formally ended. The French had signed an armistice with Germany the previous week.

1942 - Major General Dwight D Eisenhower was appointed commander of US forces in Europe.

1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea, heralding the beginning of the Korean War.

1951 - The first regular commercial colour TV transmissions were inaugurated by CBS from New York.

1959 - Eamon De Valera became president of Ireland at the age of 76.

1967 - The first television programme to be shown live worldwide was ''Our World''. It was broadcast in 26 countries on five continents, from Mexico to Japan.

1968 - The British comedian Tony Hancock was found dead in a Sydney hotel room after committing suicide.

1975 - Mozambique became independent and Samora Machel was sworn in as president after 477 years of Portuguese rule.

1988 - Laotians went to the polls for the first elections since the Communists took power in 1975.

1991 - The last Soviet troops stationed in Czechoslovakia left the country, 23 years after the Warsaw Pact invasion.

1991 - Croatia and Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia, plunging the federation into a violent breakup.

1996 - A bomb blast tore through a Saudi Arabian military complex housing foreigners in the eastern city of al-Khobar, killing 19 Americans and injuring nearly 400.

1997 - The French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who popularised underwater exploration with prize-winning films, died aged 87.

2001 - Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid started a visit to Australia, the first in 26 years, heralding a new era in relations between the two countries.

2002 - A 45-day countdown for 3,000 white Zimbabwean farmers to abandon their land began, but many vowed to defy President Robert Mugabe's ''fast-track'' land seizure programme.

2002 - WorldCom Inc the second biggest US long-distance telecoms group, fires its Chief Financial Officer Scott Sullivan and revealed it had inflated its profits over five years by 3.8 billion dollars.

2005 - Ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to a stunning landslide in Iran's presidential run-off against former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

REUTERS SBA RAI1014