Reuters historical calendar - January 21

London, Jan 20 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 21 in history: 1911 - The first Monte Carlo motor rally began.

1924 - Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin died of a brain haemorrhage. He had led the Bolsheviks to victory in the 1917 October Revolution.

1936 - Edward VIII was proclaimed Britain's king following the death of his father, George V.

1950 - George Orwell, British author of ''Animal Farm'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', died.

1954 - The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, was launched at Groton, Connecticut.

1959 - Cecil B De Mille, US film director and screenwriter, died. His reputation was based on spectacular films including ''The Ten Commandments''.

1976 - Two Anglo-French Concorde airliners took off simultaneously from Paris and London on the first scheduled passenger flights by a supersonic aircraft.

1997 - German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus signed a declaration in which Germany expressed sorrow at the 1938-45 Nazi occupation of Czech lands.

2000 - An Italian court sentenced top Mafia boss Salvatore ''Toto'' Riina and another leading mob member to life in prison for a series of bombings that stunned Italy in 1993.

2005 - Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, the Polish soldier who made death-defying trips between Warsaw and London during World War Two to carry messages to Poland's government-in-exile, died aged 91.

2006 - Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova, the pacifist icon of the ethnic Albanian drive to win independence from Serbia, died aged 61.

REUTERS SY DS1116