Reuters historical calendar - September 22

LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events which occurred on September 22 in history: 1914 - German U-boats sank the British cruisers Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy in the North Sea in World War One, killing more than 1,400 people.

1934 - More than 260 miners were killed in an explosion and fire at the Gresford Mine in Wales.

1949 - The British, Canadian and US governments jointly announced they had recently detected an atomic explosion in the Soviet Union.

The blast, initially denied by Moscow, was later revealed to be the first test of an atomic weapon by the Soviet Union and occurred on August 29.

1980 - The Gulf War broke out when Iraq invaded Iran in an attempt to control the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

1985 - French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted that French secret agents acting under orders sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand.

1989 - US songwriter Irving Berlin died aged 101. He was the author of over 1,000 songs including ''White Christmas'' and ''There's No Business Like Show Business''.

1989 - Lebanese Christian army chief General Michel Aoun accepted an Arab League plan to end the civil war in Lebanon.

1997 - Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese soldier who refused to surrender at the end of World War Two and stayed in the jungles of Guam for 26 years, died. He became a national hero on his return to Japan in 1972 for his dramatic tale of survival.

1999 - The US Justice Department filed a massive lawsuit accusing the tobacco industry of fraud and seeking to recover much of the cost of smoking-related illnesses.

2001 - President George W Bush lifted US sanctions on Pakistan and India that were imposed for their 1998 nuclear tests.

2004 - The EU agreed to lift its arms embargo on Libya after pressure from Italy, which wanted to help the North African country tackle illegal migrants.

2005 - Israel dismantled its last military base in a pocket of the northern West Bank where it had evacuated four small settlements.

REUTERS BDP RN1033