Reuters historical calendar - July 4

London, July 3 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on July 4 since 1900: 1903 - The first Pacific telegraph cable, between San Francisco and Manila, went into operation.

1904 - Construction of the Panama Canal began.

1934 - Marie Curie, Polish-French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, died.

1943 - Wladyslaw Sikorski, Polish statesman and prime minister, was killed in an air crash. He led Poland's government in exile during World War Two.

1946 - Philippines gained independence from United States.

1976 - Israel launched a commando raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue 102 hostages held by Arab and West German hijackers of an Air France plane.

1979 - Ahmed Ben Bella was released after 14 years detention. Ben Bella, Algeria's first president, was overthrown in a 1965 coup and had been kept under arrest ever since.

1991 - Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze decided to leave the Communist Party.

1994 - French President Francois Mitterrand became the first foreigner to address South Africa's post-apartheid parliament.

1997 - The US Pathfinder space probe landed on Mars.

1999 - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika granted amnesty to thousands of Muslim militant prisoners.

2000 - Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, one of Poland's most celebrated writers and anti-Communists, died at 81.

2002 - Greek police discovered the hideout of the elusive November 17 guerrilla group which had killed 23 people since 1975.

2003 - Barry White, veteran US soul singer, died. Best known for smoky ballads like ''Can't Get Enough of Your Love'' and ''You're the First, The Last, My Everything''. He was 58.

2003 - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Romanian President Ion Iliescu signed a post-Communist friendship treaty at the Kremlin, along with a separate declaration formally ending World War Two differences.

2004 - Families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks join New York City's mayor to lay the granite cornerstone of the ''Freedom Tower'' skyscraper at the site of the destroyed World Trade Centre.

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