Reuters historical calendar - October 1

LONDON, Sep 30 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on October 1 since 1900: 1908 - Henry Ford's Model T Ford car went on sale.

1918 - Arab forces aided by the British under T E Lawrence -- Lawrence of Arabia -- captured Damascus from the Turks.

1928 - Soviet leader Josef Stalin's first five-year plan setting targets for every industry, factory and workshop went into operation.

1936 - General Francisco Franco was named head of the nationalist government in Spain.

1946 - The International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremburg sentenced 12 Nazi leaders to death -- the first war criminals to be convicted of crimes against humanity.

1949 - The People's Republic of China was formed with Mao Zedong as its head.

1957 - The first meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency began in Vienna.

1960 - Nigeria achieved independence from Britain. On this day in 1963 it became a federal republic.

1964 - Japan's ''bullet train'' from Tokyo to Osaka made its first run.

1979 - The Panama Canal Zone was formally handed over to Panama after 70 years of US control.

1982 - Helmut Kohl was sworn in as West Germany's sixth chancellor, succeeding Helmut Schmidt. He lost power in 1998.

1995 - A US federal jury found Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others guilty of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center, bomb the United Nations, kill Egypt's president and destroy vital highway tunnels in New York.

1999 - Indonesia convened its first democratically elected parliament since 1955.

2004 - American photographer Richard Avedon, who turned fashion and portrait photography into art forms with images of the world's most famous figures, died aged 81.

**2005 - Three bomb blasts ripped through popular tourist areas on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, killing 23 people, including three suicide bombers.

REUTERS MQA PM1104