Reuters historical calendar - December 1

London, Nov 30 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 1 since 1900: 1906 - The Cinema Omnia Pathe, the world's first purpose-built movie theatre, opened in Paris.

1918 - The province of Transylvania, previously part of Hungary, voted unanimously for union with Romania.

1925 - The Locarno Treaties, guaranteeing peace and frontiers in Europe, were signed by France, Belgium and Germany and their terms guaranteed by Britain and Italy.

1934 - Sergei Kirov, Communist Party leader and associate of Josef Stalin, was murdered in Leningrad.

1959 - Twelve nations signed the Antarctic Treaty preserving the area for peaceful purposes and scientific research.

1973 - David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, died. He was in office from 1948-53 and again from 1955-63.

1988 - Benazir Bhutto became the first woman elected to govern a Muslim nation when Pakistan's acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan named her next prime minister.

1989 - Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope, 72 years after the atheist Bolsheviks took power in Moscow.

1991 - Ukrainians voted in a referendum by a nine-to-one margin in favour of independence from Moscow, confirming an earlier parliamentary vote.

1995 - Former Barings Bank trader Nick Leeson pleaded guilty in a Singapore court to two fraud charges linked to some 1.4 billion dollars in losses that broke the bank.

1997 - Stephane Grappelli, French jazz violinist, died aged 89.

1998 - Exxon Corp agreed to acquire Mobil Corp for 76.6 billion dollars, creating the world's biggest oil company.

2000 - Mexican President Vicente Fox took office, ending the oldest surviving single-party system in modern history.

2003 - World AIDS Day brought the launch of a 5.5 billion dollars World Health Organization plan to rush life-saving anti-retroviral medicine to 3 million of the world's poor, many of them in Africa.

2005 - South Africa's top court said it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry, putting it on track to become the first African country to legalise same-sex marriage.

Parliament passed a bill legalising gay marriage in November 2006.

REUTERS AKJ BST1030