Reuters historical calendar - June 27

London, June 26 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 27 since 1900: 1905 - Mutinous Russian soldiers seized the battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea, throwing the commander and several other officers overboard.

1944 - In World War Two, Allied forces captured Cherbourg, their biggest prize to date in the Normandy campaign.

1950 - US President Harry S Truman ordered American forces into battle in support of South Korea; the United Nations urged all members to help the South after its invasion by the North.

1954 - The world's first atomic power station opened at Obninsk, near Moscow.

1976 - Palestinian militants hijacked an Air France plane in Greece with 246 passengers and 12 crew. They eventually took it to Entebbe, Uganda, where Israeli commandos rescued over 100 hostages from a terminal building on July 4.

1986 - In The Hague, the World Court ruled that the United States had broken international law by aiding Nicaraguan rebels.

1997 - At a conference in Brussels, 95 countries agreed to sign up to a ban on landmines.

1999 - George Papadopoulos, the former Greek dictator who led a military junta that tortured and jailed thousands of Greeks between 1967 and 1973, died aged 80.

2000 - Syria's parliament unanimously approved the nomination of Bashar al-Assad as president in succession to his late father, Hafez al-Assad.

2001 - The Academy Award-winning American actor Jack Lemmon died. He was best known for his appearance in the films ''Some Like It Hot'', ''The Apartment'', ''Missing'' and ''The Odd Couple''.

2002 - The Group of Eight industrialised nations finalised a billion deal to help pay to decommission weapons of mass destruction in Russia and the rest of former Soviet Union.

2003 - Isaias Samakuva won the race to lead Angola's former rebel movement UNITA, filling the position left vacant by the death of its founder and leader, Jonas Savimbi.

2005 - The US Supreme Court ruled that Internet file-trading networks can be held liable when their users copy music, movies and other protected works without permission.

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