Reuters historical calendar - August 7

LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 7 in history: 1931 - The American jazz musician and composer Bix Beiderbecke died aged 28. He was the first white musician to make an impact on jazz.

1938 - The Russian actor, theatre director and teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky died.

1942 - The first US land offensive of World War Two in the Pacific started in the Southern Solomon Islands, on Guadalcanal.

1947 - The raft Kon Tiki ran aground on the Tuamotu Archipelago in the Pacific, 101 days after leaving Peru. The expedition, led by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, was intended to prove that pre-Incan South American Indians could have colonised Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.

1957 - Oliver Hardy, partner of Stanley Laurel in one of the most famous of all screen comedy duos, died.

1958 - The US submarine Nautilus arrived in Iceland after making the first voyage under the polar ice cap. It had passed under the North Pole on Aug. 3.

1960 - Ivory Coast was proclaimed independent from France.

1990 - Nelson Mandela's African National Congress suspended a 29-year guerrilla campaign against white rule in a dramatic move that cleared the way for talks on ending South Africa's apartheid system.

1998 - Car bombs exploded at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing at least 213 people in Nairobi and 11 in Dar es Salaam. More than 5,000 were wounded. Followers of Islamist militant Osama bin Laden were later convicted in New York.

2000 - Jean-Michel Rossi, a founder of Corsica's main guerrilla group, was assassinated with his associate Jean-Claude Fratacci in the town of l'Ile Rousse.

2001 - Cambodia's Constitutional Council approved legislation to create a court to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge for their 1970s ''killing fields'' reign of terror.

2002 - The International Monetary Fund threw a 30 billion dollar cash lifeline to Brazil, the fund's biggest bailout ever, to shore up the economy.

2005 - 123 Chinese miners drowned after being trapped deep underground in a colliery in the southern Guangdong province.

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