Reuters historical calendar - September 16

London, Sep 15 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 16 since 1900: 1931 - Libyan nationalist leader Omar Mukhtar was captured and executed by Italian forces.

1940 - President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Selective Service Bill, making all Americans between 21 and 35 liable to be called for military service.

1941 - The Shah of Iran, Reza Khan Pahlavi, abdicated in favour of Crown Prince Mohammed Reza.

1945 - The last remnants of the Japanese army in Hong Kong surrendered to the British.

1963 - The Federation of Malaysia was formed with the marriage of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah, all formerly under British rule.

1966 - The new Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Centre in New York opened with composer Samuel Barber's ''Antony and Cleopatra''.

1975 - Papua New Guinea gained full independence from Australia.

1976 - The Episcopalian Church in the United States approved the ordination of women priests and bishops.

1977 - Maria Callas, operatic soprano, died in Paris aged 53.

1978 - In Iran, 25,000 people were killed by an earthquake.

It levelled the town of Tabas and many villages.

1991 - In Hong Kong, liberal candidates scored a resounding victory in first direct elections to the British colony's legislature, saying their triumph sent a clear message to China that the people wanted more democracy.

1992 - Britain announced it was withdrawing from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

1994 - The US envoy to Somalia slipped out of Mogadishu, ending the official American presence in the war-torn nation.

1994 - British Prime Minister John Major lifted media restrictions on Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

1996 - Romania and Hungary signed a treaty to end a centuries-old rift between the two neighbours and help their efforts to join NATO and the European Union.

1996 - McGeorge Bundy, a top aide to presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and an architect of U.S. policy in Vietnam, died.

1998 - In Spain, the Basque guerrilla group ETA announced a ''total and indefinite'' truce to take effect on September 18.

1999 - Algerians voted almost unanimously to endorse President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's drive to end years of violence.

2001 - Iran reported that Tehran's Mayor Morteza Alviri sent a message of condolence over the September 11 attacks to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the first official public contact between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

2002 - Dwight Whylie, who in 1961 became the first black BBC announcer when he joined the corporation's domestic services in London, died.

2004 - Africans opened a new home near Johannesburg for the Pan-African Parliament, Africa's first representative body.

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