Reuters historical calendar - January 5

London. Jan 4 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 5 since 1900: 1919 - The German Workers Party (later the Nazi Party) was formed.

1922 - Irish explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton died. He made several expeditions to the Antarctic and died on the Falkland Islands.

1933 - Calvin Coolidge, 30th U S president, died. He was governor of Massachusetts and became vice-president in 1921.

1941 - Amy Johnson, British aviator, died. The first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930, she died after her plane crashed in the Thames estuary.

1964 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jerusalem, the first meeting of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox church leaders since the 15th century.

1969 - The Soviet spacecraft Venus 5 was launched, followed five days later by Venus 6. They reached Venus on May 16 and 17 respectively.

1996 - Yahya Ayyash (the ''Engineer''), elusive mastermind behind a wave of Islamic suicide bombings against Israel, was killed in Gaza, apparently by a booby-trapped cellular telephone.

2000 - U S authorities decided that Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy embroiled in an international custody battle, should be returned to his father in Cuba.

2002 - A small plane flown by a 15-year-old student crashed into an office high-rise in Tampa, Florida after taking off from a nearby airport without clearance. The pilot was killed.

2003 - Massimo Girotti, one of the most popular leading men of post-war Italian cinema, died. Best known for his roles in Luchino Visconti's films including ''Ossessione'', ''Senso'' and Le streghe (The Witches).

2006 - At least 76 people died when a four-storey building collapsed in the Muslim holy city of Mecca during the annual haj pilgrimage.

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