Reuters historical calendar - December 2

London, Dec 2 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 3 since 1900: 1942 - Physicists led by Enrico Fermi created the world's first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago.

1954 - The US Senate condemned Senator Joseph McCarthy for misconduct after his ruthless investigations of thousands of suspected Communists.

1971 - The United Arab Emirates was formed on this day.

1971 - The unmanned Soviet craft Mars 3 landed on Mars.

1979 - Iranian electors voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new constitution giving absolute power to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1982 - The first permanent artificial heart was implanted in Barney Clark, a Seattle dentist, by Dr William De Vries at the University of Utah.

1990 - After German reunification, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP won the first free all-German elections since 1932.

1991 - Joseph Cicippio, US hostage in Lebanon, was freed after being held for 1,906 days by the Revolutionary Justice Organisation.

1993 - Pablo Escobar, boss of the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia, was killed in a shootout as police tried to arrest him.

1995 - Canadian novelist, playwright and critic Robertson Davies died at 82.

2000 - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad approved economic reforms, including establishment of private banks to end a near 40-year state banking monopoly.

2001 - US energy trader Enron Corp filed for the biggest ever Chapter 11 bankruptcy and hit rival Dynegy Inc with a billion lawsuit for pulling out of a rescue merger.

2002 - Rowan Williams, controversial defender of gays and promoter of women bishops, officially became the new Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans.

2003 - UN war crimes judges in The Hague jailed Bosnian Serb former army commander Momir Nikolic for 27 years for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre - the longest given so far.

2004 - America's first female poet laureate Mona Van Duyn, once described as a pioneer of the poetry of the suburbs, died aged 83.

2004 - Dame Alicia Markova, one of the great ballerinas of the 20th century who founded and presided over the English National Ballet, died a day after her 94th birthday.

2005 - Double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976.

REUTERS SB RAI1103