Reuters historical calendar - December 5

LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 5 since 1900: 1917 - German and Russian delegates signed an armistice at Brest-Litovsk; peace negotiations began there on December 21.

1926 - Claude-Oscar Monet, French painter and one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, died.

1933 - The 21st amendment of the US constitution was ratified, ending the ''noble experiment'' of prohibition.

1945 - The so-called ''Lost Squadron'', five US Navy Avenger bombers carrying 14 Navy flyers, took off on a training mission from a Florida air base, and were never seen again. They were popularly believed to have vanished in the ''Bermuda Triangle''.

1957 - The Indonesian government ordered the expulsion of all Dutch nationals.

1965 - General Charles De Gaulle fell short of a clear majority in the first round of French presidential elections, and was forced into a runoff with leftist Francois Mitterrand.

1977 - South Africa created Bophuthatswana as the Tswana tribal homeland, covering some 35,000 sq km.

1977 - Egypt broke ties with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen after they all opposed its peace moves with Israel.

1985 - Britain announced it was withdrawing from UNESCO on December 31, claiming the agency had an anti-Western bias and accusing it of financial extravagance.

1990 - British author Salman Rushdie, who had been in hiding since Iran ordered his death for blasphemy, appeared in public for the first time in nearly two years.

1995 - Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana was formally appointed Secretary-General of NATO, the first Spaniard to lead the Western alliance.

2000 - Matthew Lukwiyawho, a Ugandan doctor who led the battle against an outbreak of the deadly Ebola haemorrhagic fever, died from the virus.

2001 - Afghan factions signed an accord to set up a post-Taliban government headed by Pashtun chief Hamid Karzai.

The deal created a government of 30 members.

2001 - Former Sotheby's auction house chairman Alfred Taubman was found guilty in a US District Court of conspiring to fix prices with rival Christie's.

2001 - America's Cup winner Peter Blake was killed by pirates who stormed his vessel at the mouth of the Amazon River.

2002 - Paraguay's Congress voted to start impeachment proceedings against President Luis Gonzalez Macchi, besieged by corruption scandals and deepening economic slump. Macchi narrowly escaped being thrown out of office in February 2003.

2003 - An explosion tore through a morning commuter train just outside Yessentuki station in Russia's southern fringe.

Forty-six people were killed and more than 160 injured.

2005 - Liu Binyan, a one-time Communist Party journalist who became known in exile as the ''conscience of China,'' died in the United States aged 80.

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