Reuters historical calendar - December 24

LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 24 since 1900: 1914 - A German plane, in the first air raid on Britain, dropped a single bomb on Dover.

1941 - The British Eighth Army recaptured Benghazi, Libya, from the Germans.

1942 - The German research station at Peenemunde successfully tested the V1 Flying Bomb.

1942 - An assassin killed Admiral Francois Darlan, a senior figure in France's collaborationist Vichy government.

1943 - General Dwight Eisenhower was named supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force preparing the invasion of German-occupied France.

1951 - Libya proclaimed a monarchy under King Idriss I.

1953 - An express train crashed into a river in New Zealand, killing 151 people.

1980 - Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy during World War Two, died.

1989 - Deposed Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega turned himself in to the papal envoy and asked for political asylum.

1992 - US President George Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger and five other Reagan aides involved in the Iran-Contra affair.

1994 - Fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas hijacked a French airliner at Algiers airport, killing two people.

1995 - Thousands of Palestinians gathered at Bethlehem's Manger Square to celebrate the city's first Christmas in 28 years free from Israeli occupation.

1995 - An Islamic party, Welfare, won a general election for the first time in Turkey's 72-year secular history.

1997 - A Paris court jailed guerrilla mastermind Carlos ''The Jackal'' for life for killing two French secret agents.

1999 - Maurice Couve de Murville, longest-serving French foreign minister who later became prime minister, died at 92.

1999 - Ivory Coast's army overthrew elected President Henri Konan Bedie in a coup.

1999 - General Joao Batista Figueiredo, Brazil's last military ruler who restored civilian rule in 1985, died at 81.

2001 - Israel barred Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from making his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem, insisting he crack down on Palestinian militants.

2003 - The Italian food giant Parmalat, embroiled in one of Europe's biggest corporate scandals, filed for bankruptcy protection after the discovery of a 7 billion euro hole in its accounts.

2004 - New Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem with prayers for peace after the death of Yasser Arafat, who was barred in the past.

REUTERS PB PM1008