Reuters historical calendar - September 3

By Staff
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London, Sep 2 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 3 since 1900: 1914 - Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa was elected Pope, becoming Benedict XV.

1925 - The US dirigible Shenandoah, the first airship to use helium gas, ran into a storm over southern Ohio and broke up in the air with the loss of 14 officers and men.

1930 - A Breguet biplane landed on Long Island, New York, completing the first Paris-New York non-stop flight in 37 hours and 18 minutes.

1935 - Sir Malcolm Campbell's car was timed at 301 mph (485 kph) at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the first officially clocked performance over 300 mph by a land vehicle.

1939 - Britain and France declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland.

1962 - e.e. cummings (born Edward Estlin Cummings), US poet who wrote all his verse in lower case, died.

1969 - Ho Chi Minh, president of North Vietnam from 1954 and one of the most influential of communist leaders, died aged 79.

1976 - The US spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars and began sending back photographs.

1978 - John Paul I was invested as Pope following his election in August. He died on September 28.

1984 - A new South African constitution came into effect, setting up a three-chamber, racially divided parliament for white, Indian and coloured (mixed race) people.

1989 - A Cuban Airlines plane carrying 126 people from Havana to Milan crashed into a village shortly after takeoff. All on board were killed, along with some 45 people on the ground.

1991 - The Italian-born US film director and three-time Oscar winner Frank Capra died.

1991 - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania applied for membership of the United Nations.

1993 - Cambodia's government agreed to a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihanouk returning to the throne.

1994 - Russia and China ended decades of confrontation and agreed to cease keeping nuclear missiles aimed at each other.

1996 - The United States launched one of the biggest military strikes against Iraq since the Gulf War, firing 27 cruise missiles at targets in southern Iraq in response to Iraqi attacks on Kurds in the north.

1997 - Government troops on the Comoro Islands invaded the island of Anjouan to try to end a month-long secession by force.

1997 - A Vietnam Airlines Tupolev Tu-134 plane crashed while coming in to land at Phnom Penh airport; 64 people died.

2000 - Pope John Paul beatified the ultra-conservative 19th century pope Pius IX, putting him on the path to sainthood despite protests from Jews and liberal Catholics. He also beatified Pope John XXIII, a popular moderniser.

2001 - The United States and Israel angrily pulled out of the UN racism conference in Durban in protest at attempts to single out Israel as a racist state.

2002 - U.S.-based Internet song-swap service, Napster, finally folded after a US bankruptcy court blocks its sale to German media group Bertelsmann AG.

2003 - Libya told Lebanon it was severing diplomatic ties after growing Lebanese criticism over the disappearance of a Shi'ite cleric 25 years ago.

2004 - Russian special forces stormed the Beslan school gymnasium where Chechen separatists were holding some 1,000 people hostage. Up to 330 people were killed, nearly half of them children.

2005 - US Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a conservative force on the Supreme Court for over 30 years, died aged 80.

REUTERS PDM MIR RAI1122

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