Reuters historical calendar - November 9

London, Nov 8 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on November 9 since 1900: 1918 - Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated.

1937 - Ramsay MacDonald, who became Britain's first Labour prime minister in 1924, died at age 70.

1938 - Nazi-inspired anti-Jewish riots took place across Germany after the murder of a German official in Paris. Jewish businesses were ransacked, synagogues torched and many Jews sent to concentration camps. The night became known as ''Kristallnacht'' (Crystal Night).

1952 - Chaim Weizmann, first president of the newly founded Jewish state of Israel from 1948 to 52, died.

1953 - Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and prose writer, died in New York after succumbing to whisky and drugs on a reading tour of the US.

1953 - King Ibn Saud, Muslim religious leader who created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, died.

1963 - A gas explosion at a coal mine at Omuta, Japan, killed 448 miners and injured 470. On the same day 161 people were killed when a passenger train travelling to Tokyo collided with a goods train near Namamugi.

1965 - A huge power failure blacked out New York City, parts of eight northeastern states and parts of Canada, affecting 30 million people.

1967 - The first Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned Apollo 4 spacecraft was successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Centre.

1970 - Charles De Gaulle, French soldier and statesman, died aged 79.

1989 - East Germans on foot and in cars began arriving in West Germany and West Berlin only hours after the East German government threw open its border to the West.

1990 - King Birendra of Nepal proclaimed a new constitution that restored multi-party democracy to the Himalayan kingdom and stripped him of his absolute power.

1993 - The world-famous Ottoman bridge at Mostar in southwestern Bosnia, which endured scores of wars and invading armies over four centuries, collapsed into the Neretva River.

1995 - PLO chairman Yasser Arafat made his first visit to Israel and paid a surprise condolence call at the Tel Aviv home of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's widow, Leah.

1999 - Cuba said it would file a lawsuit against the United States for more than 100 billion dollars for the damages resulting from Washington's 40-year economic embargo against Havana.

2002 - Iyad Sawalha, head of Islamic Jihad's military wing and the top of an Israeli wanted list, was shot dead in the West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli forces.

2003 - U.S. actor Art Carney, who won the 1974 best actor Oscar and five Emmy awards for his role in ''The Honeymooners'', died at age 85, in Connecticut after a long illness.

2005 - Europe's first space probe, the 1.3 tonne ''Venus Express,'' was launched on a mission to shed light on Venus and give scientists clues about global warming.

2005 - Three suicide bombers blew themselves up at three international hotels in Jordan's capital Amman, killing 60.

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