Reuters historical calendar - January 17

London, Jan 16 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 17 since 1900: 1919 - The classical pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski became prime minister of Poland.

1929 - King Inayatullah of Afghanistan was forced to abdicate after a coup; he had ruled for only three days.

1977 - Double murderer Gary Gilmore became the first person to be executed in the United States since the re-introduction of the death penalty.

1991 - In the Gulf War, US-led allied forces launched ''Operation Desert Storm'', an air and missile offensive against Iraqi positions.

1995 - More than 6,400 people were killed when an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 hit Kobe, Japan.

2001 - Jewish Holocaust survivors won a compensation deal from Austria for assets stripped from them when Austria was part of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

2002 - Camilo Jose Cela, the Spanish novelist who won the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature for works such as ''The Family of Pascual Duarte'' and ''The Hive'', died aged 85.

2004 - Ray Stark, Hollywood film producer and talent agent who made over 125 films including ''Funny Girl'', ''The Way We Were'' and ''Night of the Iguana'', died aged 88.

2005 - Zhao Ziyang, a Chinese reformist toppled as Communist Party chief in 1989 for opposing an army crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, died aged 85. The one-time heir-apparent to Deng Xiaoping spent his last 15 years under house arrest.

Reuters BDP GC1041