Reuters historical calendar - July 19

London, July 118 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on July 19 since 1900: 1900 - The Paris Metro underground rail system opened.

1941 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched his ''V for Victory'' campaign in World War Two. The BBC played the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which match the dot-dot-dot-dash Morse code for the letter V, before news bulletins.

1943 - In World War Two, 700 US planes dropped hundreds of tonnes of bombs on marshalling yards and airfields near Rome.

1947 - Burma's effective prime minister and independence leader U Aung San was assassinated along with six other ministers.

1965 - Syngman Rhee, first president of South Korea, died.

1980 - The 22nd Summer Olympics opened in Moscow; more than 40 nations boycotted the games in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1989 - Poland's National Assembly elected Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski president.

1992 - A car bomb killed Paolo Borsellino, a leading anti-Mafia judge, in Palermo, Sicily.

1996 - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic resigned from public office to clear the way for post-war elections in Bosnia.

1996 - Former boxing champion Muhammad Ali lit the flame that opened the centenary Olympic Games in Atlanta.

1997 - The Irish Republican Army announced a ceasefire in its 28-year-old campaign to end British rule over Northern Ireland.

1998 - The son of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev married the daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, reviving a tradition of cementing political ties with family ones.

2001 - The British politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to 4 years in jail for perjury and perverting the course of justice.

2002 - The British doctor Harold Shipman joined the ranks of the world's worst serial killers when an official inquiry found that he had murdered at least 215 of his patients.

2002 - Greek police formally arrested Alexandros Giotopoulos and named him as leader of the November 17 urban guerrilla group, blamed for the deaths of 23 people.

2002 - Alexander Ginzburg, a leading dissident and writer during the Soviet era, died. Ginzburg was imprisoned and sent to labour camps for setting up the first independent magazine in the Soviet Union and for his critical coverage of the justice system.

2004 - Philippine troops pulled out of Iraq after the government gave in to militants holding a Filipino hostage, straining its alliance with the United States.

2005 - Hizbollah, branded a terrorist group by the United States, won a ministerial post for the first time in Lebanon when Prime Minister Fouad Siniora formed the country's first government since Syrian forces withdrew.

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