Reuters historical calendar - September 15

Sondon, Sep 14 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 15 since 1900.

1916 - Military tanks went into action for the first time as part of the Allied offensive at the Battle of the Somme.

1935 - In Germany, the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws, starting a programme of violent religious and racial persecution.

1935 - Manuel Luis Quezon was elected first president of the Philippine Commonwealth, under US supervision.

1938 - British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to meet Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the first of two meetings to try to defuse the crisis over the Sudetenland.

1949 - Konrad Adenauer was elected first chancellor of West Germany and Theodor Heuss first president.

1950 - In the Korean War, UN troops landed at Inchon, a decisive step in driving North Korean troops from the south.

1959 - Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev arrived in the United States at the start of a 12-day visit.

1972 - Spain and the Soviet Union signed a trade agreement, the first pact between the two since the Spanish Civil War.

1972 - Two former White House aides, Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, were added to the five men already charged with the break-in at the Watergate building.

1973 - King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden died aged 90 and was succeeded by his grandson Carl XVI Gustav.

1978 - Wilhelm Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer and manufacturer, died. In 1944, his Me-262 became the first jet plane to be flown in combat.

1982 - Yasser Arafat was granted a private audience with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, prompting protests from the Israeli government.

1983 - Menachem Begin, founder of the right-wing Likud party, resigned as Israeli prime minister. He was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir.

1987 - Hackers in Germany known as the Chaos Computer Club said they had tapped into NASA's computer system and planted a ''Trojan Horse'' program in it.

1999 - A gunman shouting anti-religious curses pumped bullets into teenage worshippers in a Texas Baptist church, killing seven people, before shooting himself dead.

2000 - Spain's most wanted fugitive, Ignacio Gracia Arregui, suspected leader of the Basque guerrilla group ETA, was arrested in the French Basque town of Bidart.

2001 - President George W Bush said for the first time that the United States was ''at war'', singling out Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, based in Afghanistan, as a prime suspect behind the September 11 attacks.

2002 - South and North Korea agreed to begin clearing mines along their border and to set up a military hotline to smooth work on relinking railways at the truce village of Panmunjom.

2004 - Johnny Ramone, the lead guitarist with the influential US punk rock band the Ramones, died aged 55.

2005 - Former rebels in Indonesia's Aceh province began handing in their weapons to foreign monitors under a landmark peace deal.

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