Reuters historical calendar - January 23

London, Jan 22 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 23 in history: 1907 - The first American Indian senator, Charles Curtis of Kansas, began his term of office.

1931 - The Russian Anna Pavlova, one of the most celebrated prima ballerinas of her time, died aged 49.

1937 - The trial began in Moscow of 17 leading Communists accused of involvement in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow the Soviet regime and assassinate its leaders.

1944 - The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch died. His best-known work is ''The Scream''.

1964 - The heart of a chimpanzee was transplanted into a human patient at the Mississippi Medical Centre in the United States -- the first transplant of an animal organ into a human. The patient died soon after.

1989 - The Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali died. He was buried in a crypt under a glass dome in the Dali museum in Figueras, Spain.

2000 - Kin Narita, who charmed millions as one of the world's oldest pairs of twins, died at the age of 107 in the Japanese city of Nagoya.

2003 - Giovanni Agnelli, who turned the Italian family car company Fiat into a global industrial powerhouse, died aged 81.

2004 - Helmut Newton, the German-born photographer whose stark portraits of nude women in chains and bonds won him acclaim and revulsion, was killed in a car accident in Hollywood, aged 83.

2005 - The American comedian Johnny Carson, king of US late-night television as host of NBC's ''The Tonight Show'' for nearly 30 years, died aged 79.

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