Reuters historical calendar - August 19

London, Aug 18 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 19 since 1900: 1929 - Sergei Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario and director, died. His Ballets Russes produced such masterpieces as Stravinsky's ''Rite of Spring'' and ''Firebird''.

1936 - Federico Garcia Lorca, leading Spanish poet, was shot dead by Fascists early in the Civil War.

1944 - Sir Henry Wood, British conductor and co-founder of the British Promenade Concerts (''Proms'') in 1895, died.

1953 - Mohammad Mossadeq, Iranian Prime Minister, was overthrown in a coup and the Shah returned from exile in Italy.

1960 - The Soviet Sputnik 5 satellite was launched into orbit carrying two dogs named Belka and Strelka.

1960 - Francis Gary Powers, the US spy plane pilot shot down by the Russians over Soviet territory, was sentenced to 10 years detention.

1977 - Groucho Marx, actor and comedian died. Probably the most popular of the Marx Brothers, whose films include ''A Night at the Opera'' and ''A Day at the Races''.

1978 - A fire in a theatre set by Muslim militants in Abadan, Iran, killed over 400 people.

1981 - Two Libyan fighter planes were shot down by the US Air Force in the Gulf of Sirte.

1987 - Gunman Michael Ryan shot dead 16 people and injured 11 during a rampage through the English town of Hungerford.

1991 - Soviet hardliners launched an abortive coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It collapsed two days later.

1995 - US peace envoy Robert Frasure and three others were killed when their vehicle plunged off a road in Bosnia.

2002 - A Russian Mi-26 helicopter crashed in Chechnya killing 118 in the country's largest single loss of military life in the region.

Rebels said they had downed the overcrowded helicopter.

2002 - Abu Nidal, one of the world's most wanted terrorist masterminds and head of the Palestinian Fatah Revolutionary Council, was reported to have been found dead from gunshot wounds in his apartment in Baghdad. He was thought to have died 3 days earlier.

Iraq later said he killed himself.

2003 - A massive truck bomb devastated the UN headquarters in Baghdad, in the worst attack on a UN civilian complex in the UN's history. 22 people are killed including Sergio Vieira de Mello the top U.N. envoy to Iraq.

2005 - Former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza won the presidency of Burundi in a legislative vote under a peace plan to end a 12-year civil war that killed 300,000.

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