Reuters historical calendar - February 12

LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on February 12 since 1900: 1912 - China's Manchu dynasty under Pu Yi abdicated and a provisional republic was established under Sun Yat-sen.

1922 - Indian nationalists suspended their campaign of civil disobedience amid a rising tide of violence.

1929 - Lillie Langtry, actress and King Edward VII's mistress, died.

1953 - The Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Israel after a bomb exploded at the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv.

1961 - An interplanetary space station aimed at Venus was launched from the Soviet Union.

1973 - North Vietnam freed the first group of US prisoners of war.

1979 - Nationalist guerrillas shot down an Air Rhodesia civilian plane, killing 59 people in what is now Zimbabwe.

1996 - Yasser Arafat took office as the first Palestinian president.

2001 - Scientists celebrated the publication of the sequencing of the human genetic code.

2001 - Space probe NEAR Shoemaker came to a bouncing landing on the asteroid Eros, the first time any craft had landed on this kind of space rock.

2002 - The trial of Slobadan Milosevic opened in the Hague. He was charged with crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo and genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

2002 - An Iran Air Tours Tu-154 with 117 passengers and crew, crashed near the western city of Khorramabad. All aboard were killed.

2002 - Warring Indonesian Christians and Muslims from the Moluccas spice islands signed a peace deal aimed at ending three years of violence that has killed thousands.

2004 - Israel refused to attend a World Court hearing on whether it should tear down a barrier taking in Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank territory.

2006 - American Peter Benchley, author of the bestseller ''Jaws,'' which was the basis for the blockbuster movie that terrified beachgoers and kept many out of the water for years, died aged 65.

REUTERS AB PM1328