Reuters Historical Calendar - September 12

London, Sep 11 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 12 since 1900: 1935 - The US millionaire Howard Hughes flew a plane of his own design at 352.46 miles per hour (567.21 km per hour) to establish the first of his several aviation records.

1940 - Four teenagers followed their dog when it ran down a hole near Lascaux, France, and discovered some of the earliest Known cave paintings, dating back over 13,000 years.

1953 - Nikita Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1968 - Albania announced it was withdrawing from the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact.

1970 - Arab guerrillas blew up three airliners at Dawson's Field in Jordan after hijacking them six days earlier. All the passengers were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, including hijacker Leila Khaled.

1970 - The supersonic airliner Concorde landed for the first time at Heathrow Airport in London, causing a chorus of complaints about the noise.

1972 - An Icelandic gunboat sank two British trawlers in the North Sea in the first hostilities of the ''Cod War''.

1974 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed in an army coup. He had ruled since 1930.

1977 - Steve Biko, South African black civil rights leader, died in police detention. He was among at least 90 black leaders who were murdered or went missing under white rule.

1980 - Turkish armed forces led by General Kenan Evren, chief of the general staff, overthrew the government of Suleyman Demirel in a bloodless coup.

1989 - Poland's parliament approved the Solidarity-led government of Prime Minister Tadeuz Mazowiecki in a vote formally ending communist rule.

1990 - East and West Germany and the World War Two allies signed a treaty to restore sovereignty to a united Germany and define its international status.

1992 - The US space shuttle Endeavour took off with a crew that included Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.

1999 - Indonesia agreed to allow a UN peacekeeping force into East Timor to help end violence there.

2001 - NATO invoked its mutual defence clause for the first time in its 52-year history, opening the way for a possible collective military response to the September 11 attacks in the US 2002 - The Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello took over as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. De Mello was among 22 people killed when the UN office in Baghdad was blown up in August 2003.

2003 - Johnny Cash, country music's ''Man in Black'', died aged 71 after an almost 50-year career singing of coal miners, sharecroppers, convicts and cowboys.

2003 - The UN Security Council lifted sanctions against Libya, triggering the release of up to 2.7 billion dollars to the families of 270 people who died when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland in 1988.

2005 - China said it would no longer regard the death toll in natural disasters as a state secret.

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