Reuters historical calendar - May 15

London, May 14 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurre14 on May 15 in history: 1918 - The world's first airmail service began between New York, Philadelphia and Washington, using planes supplied by the US War Department.

1928 - The Australian Flying Doctor service was inaugurated by Dr Vincent Welsh at Australian Inland Mission, Cloncurry, Queensland.

1930 - Ellen Church, the world's first air hostess, welcomed her first 11 passengers aboard a Boeing 80A at Oakland Airport.

1934 - Karlis Ulmanis seized power in a nationalist coup in Latvia.

1940 - Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the United States.

1940 - The Dutch army surrendered to the invading Germans.

1955 - Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Vienna Treaty restoring the sovereignty of Austria, which had been annexed by Nazi Germany before World War two.

1957 - Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb -- on Christmas Island, in the Pacific Ocean.

1978 - Sir Robert Menzies, long-serving Australian prime minister, died. He was Liberal prime minister from 1939 to 1941 and 1949 to 1966.

1990 - ''Portrait of Doctor Gachet'' by Vincent Van Gogh sold for a record 82.5 million dollars at Christies in New York.

1991 - President Francois Mitterrand appointed Edith Cresson as France's first woman prime minister. Known for her outspokenness, she was replaced after less than a year.

1995 - China conducted an underground nuclear test days after agreeing to an extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

1996 - Atal Bihari Vajpayee became India's first Hindu nationalist prime minister after his Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as the largest single group in a hung parliament.

2002 - Former Yugoslav Army general Mile Mrksic and Milan Martic, a former rebel leader in Croatia, arrived in the Hague to surrender to the war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia.

2002 - Male heirs to the Italian throne had their hopes of returning home dashed after 56 years of exile when a motion in parliament failed to muster enough votes.

2003 - Eliezer Niyitegeka, former Rwandan information minister, was jailed for life and former mayor Laurent Semanza for 25 years when a UN tribunal found them guilty of taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

2005 - The Iranian parliament voted to oblige the government to develop the capacity to enrich nuclear fuel.

2006 - The United States restored full diplomatic ties with Libya, rewarding it for scrapping its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

2006 - The New Zealander Mark Inglis, who had lost both his legs to frostbite, became the first double amputee to conquer Mount Everest, despite breaking one of his artificial limbs during the ascent.

2006 - Giorgio Napolitano took office as president, Italy's first former communist to become head of state.

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