Reuters historical calendar - March 9

March 8 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 9 since 1900: 1916 - Germany declared war on Portugal on the grounds that Portugal had seized German shipping in Portuguese harbours.

1918 - The German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind died.

1924 - Italy annexed the independent city of Fiume but abandoned claims to Yugoslavia's Dalmatian coast.

1942 - Japanese troops took Java after much fighting against Dutch colonial forces and their British, Australian and US allies.

1956 - Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriot movement for unification with Greece, was deported from Cyprus to the Seychelles by the British colonial authorities, who accused him of supporting terrorism.

1976 - Forty-two people died in Cavalese in Italy in the world's worst cable car disaster. One teenage girl survived.

1991 - Yugoslavia deployed tanks in Belgrade after bloody clashes between riot police and anti-communist protesters.

1992 - Former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin died. He shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

1995 - President Bill Clinton approved a visa for Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA guerrillas who fought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, to enter the United States to raise funds.

1996 - George Burns, one of America's best loved and most enduring entertainers, died weeks after his 100th birthday.

2002 - The Mont Blanc Alpine tunnel reopened to car traffic after a fire in 1999 that killed 39 people.

2004 - Scientists unveiled a picture of the universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that 13 billion years back into the cosmos.

2005 - The Spanish serial murderer Alfredo Galan, nicknamed the ''playing card killer'' because he left a card at the scene of his crimes, received jail sentences totalling 142 years.

**2006 - John Profumo, the government minister at the centre of one of Britain's biggest political scandals, featuring an explosive mix of high society sex and Cold War paranoia, died aged 91.

REUTERS BDP VC1015