Reuters historical calendar - August 18

London, Aug 17 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 18 since 1900: 1932 - Jim Mollison, Scottish aviator, made the first westbound transatlantic solo flight, from Portmarnock, Ireland, to Pennfield, New Brunswick, Canada.

1954 - James Wilkins became the first black person to attend a US cabinet meeting. As assistant secretary of labour, he attended because the secretary and undersecretary were away.

1960 - The first commercially produced oral contraceptive, Enovid 10, was launched in Skokie, Illinois.

1964 - South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies.

1976 - Two US soldiers were axed to death by North Korean soldiers in a skirmish at Panmunjom on the tense border between North and South Korea.

1989 - Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan was assassinated.

1993 - The United States told Sudan it had been placed on the list of nations accused of sponsoring terrorism.

1998 - The first heart surgery to be broadcast on the Internet was performed in the United States by Dr Robert Lazzarra, who carried out two bypass operations.

1999 - Israel's leading playwright, Hanoch Levin, died in Tel Aviv at 56. A master of Hebrew wordplay and allegory, he wrote 34 plays including ''Queen of the Bathtub''.

2001 - The annual Rio Group summit ended with a plea to U.S President Bush to support plans for IMF aid to Argentina, which had been stricken by fears of default on its 8 billion debt.

2002 - Pope John Paul, addressing some 2.7 million people, his largest crowd ever in Poland, warned that the new millennium was threatened by an onslaught of evil.

2004 - Greece's two top athletes - Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou - pulled out of the Athens Olympics and apologised to the Greek people for a scandal over missed dope tests.

2005 - Andronico Luksic, mining magnate and Chile's richest man, died of cancer. He was 76.

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