Reuters historical calendar - October 21

LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on October 21 since 1900: 1915 - The first direct transatlantic speech relay by radio telephone was made by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from Arlington, Virginia, to Paris.

1934 - Chinese Communist forces led by Mao Zedong began an attempt to break out of encirclement in Jiangxi province by Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Army. The ''Long March'' to safety through hostile lands to Yanan, 9,600 km to the north, took almost a year.

1940 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill taunted Adolf Hitler about his invasion plans in a radio broadcast.

1950 - Chinese forces began their occupation of Tibet.

1960 - The Dreadnought, Britain's first nuclear submarine, was launched by Queen Elizabeth.

1966 - A colliery slag heap slid and buried a school in the Welsh village of Aberfan, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

1967 - The Egyptian navy sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat off Sinai.

1969 - The government in Somalia was overthrown and replaced by a Supreme Revolutionary Council headed by Mohamed Siad Barre.

1986 - The United States ordered 55 Soviet diplomats to leave by November 1 in retaliation for the expulsion of five American diplomats from Moscow. The Soviet Union retaliated on October 22.

1990 - Dany Chamoun, leader of the National Liberal Party in Lebanon, was assassinated with members of his family.

1991 - The American hostage Jesse Turner was released from nearly five years in captivity in Beirut.

1991 - President Mobutu of Zaire sacked Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi. The subsequent rioting caused many deaths.

1993 - Burundi's President Melchior Ndadaye died in an abortive military coup.

1994 - The United States and North Korea signed a landmark deal under which North Korea would freeze and then dismantle its nuclear programme.

1998 - The ex-communist Massimo D'Alema took over as Italy's prime minister, heading a Social Democrat-dominated government that included the first Marxist ministers in half a century.

1999 - More than 110 people were killed and about 400 injured in a rocket attack on a crowded market in Grozny, capital of the restive Russian region of Chechnya.

2001 - Russia and United States pledged to cooperate to prevent nuclear, biological and chemical weapons being used in terrorism.

2002 - The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal challenging as unconstitutional executions of people who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes.

2005 - Shirley Horn, the American Grammy-winning jazz vocalist and pianist known for her intimate, whispery vocals and virtuoso piano playing, died aged 71.

REUTERS SP HS1048