Reuters historical calendar - September 7

London, Sep 6 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 7 since 1900: 1901 - The Boxer Rebellion, which attempted to drive all foreigners out of China, officially ended with the signing of the Peking Protocol.

1940 - The German air force under Hermann Goering began its ''blitz'' bombing campaign on London. Over 300 people were killed on this day alone.

1949 - The Mexican painter Jose Clemente Orozco died. One of the greatest muralists of the 20th century, he decorated many buildings in Mexico and the United States.

1962 - Taiwan broke off diplomatic relations with Laos after Laos established diplomatic relations with China and North Vietnam.

1978 - Keith Moon, drummer with British rock group The Who, died after a drug overdose.

1986 - Left-wing opponents ambushed the motorcade of Chilean leader General Augusto Pinochet with bazookas and automatic gunfire in a failed assassination attempt.

1986 - Bishop Desmond Tutu was enthroned as Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa. He was the first black head of South Africa's Anglicans.

1993 - Six former Soviet republics -- Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Tajikistan -- signed a framework agreement to keep the Russian rouble as their common currency.

1994 - The Stars and Stripes flag was lowered for the last time over U.S. army headquarters in Berlin, formally ending the American presence in the city after nearly half a century.

1997 - Zaire's former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko died in exile in Morocco. One of Africa's longest-serving strongmen, he was ousted by a rebellion led by Laurent Kabila.

1999 - An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale struck Athens, killing 139 people.

2000 - Cuban President Fidel Castro shook the hand of his U.S.

counterpart Bill Clinton. It was believed to be the first time he had shaken the hand of a U.S. president since he took power in 1959.

2001 - Christian-Muslim violence flared in the Nigerian city of Jos. According to the Red Cross, at least 500 people were killed and hundreds wounded in less than a week of rioting.

2002 - Forty-nine Nepali policemen were killed by Maoist rebels fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy.

2002 - Uziel Gal, Israeli inventor of the ''Uzi'' submachine gun, died. He began work on the Uzi after the 1948 war in which Israel was born, and the weapon became standard issue for the Israeli army by the mid-1950s.

2004 - The white South African cleric Beyers Naude, a rare public symbol of white dissent during the apartheid years, died aged 89.

2004 - The U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 1,000, nearly 18 months after American-led forces invaded to topple President Saddam Hussein.

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