Reuters historical calendar - December 14

London, Dec 13 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 14 since 1900: 1900 - Max Planck published his Quantum Theory that radiant energy comes in small, indivisible packets and is not continuous as previously thought.

1911 - Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, and three companions became the first to reach the South Pole.

1918 - Women in Britain voted for the first time in a general election and were allowed to stand as candidates.

1918 - Portuguese President Sidonio Pais was fatally wounded as he entered Rossio station in Lisbon only weeks after an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

1920 - The first fatalities on a scheduled passenger flight occurred when an aircraft crashed into a London house, killing the two-person crew and two passengers.

1927 - Britain signed a treaty recognising the independence of Iraq and supported admitting it to the League of Nations.

1935 - Thomas Masaryk resigned as Czechoslovakia's first president.

1939 - The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union for aggression against Finland.

1947 - Stanley Baldwin, who served three terms as British prime minister, died.

1959 - Archbishop Makarios became the first president of the Republic of Cyprus.

1960 - A Paris convention was signed creating the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

1962 - The Mariner II space probe began sending back man's first information from another planet - Venus.

1967 - Scientists at Stanford University isolated nuclear DNA from a virus in a test tube.

1978 - The U N General Assembly called for an oil embargo against South Africa.

1989 - Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who shunned official honour to fight the Kremlin for human rights and political freedom, died aged 68.

1995 - Leaders from former Yugoslavia signed a Bosnian peace treaty in Paris, ending Europe's worst conflict since World War Two and opening the way for thousands of NATO troops to move into the shattered country.

2000 - Cuban President Fidel Castro met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Havana.

2001 - Winfried Georg ''Max'' Sebald, German-born author and British academic whose books were based on tragic events of the past 200 years, was killed in a traffic accident. He was 57.

2002 - The wooden ferry ''Papa Friends 2000'' pitches nearly 200 passengers into Lake Piso near the coastal town of Robertsport killing all but 15.

2003 - Former Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople, who backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos but later championed democracy after Marcos's overthrow in 1986, died.

2003 - US screen actress Jeanne Crain, died. Crain, best known for her appearances in the films ''State Fair'' and ''Margie'' specialised in film comedies in the 1940s. She was 78.

2004 - French President Jacques Chirac inaugurated the 343 metre high, 2.5 km long Millau viaduct, the world's highest bridge.

2004 - Filipino movie legend Fernando Poe Jr, known as ''Da King'' for his roles as an indestructible underdog, died aged 65.

Poe nearly unseated Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in presidential elections earlier in the year.

2004 - Britain's most acclaimed harpist, Sidonie Goossens, died aged 105.

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