Reuters historical calendar - May 17

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 17 since 1900: 1900 - A small British cavalry force finally relieved the garrison under Colonel Robert Baden-Powell at Mafeking after 217 days siege by the Boers in South Africa.

1935 - French composer Paul Dukas, whose composition ''Sorcerer's Apprentice'' featured in the Walt Disney film ''Fantasia'', died.

1940 - In World War Two, the German army entered Brussels.

1954 - The US Supreme Court overturned an 1896 ruling that education should be ''separate but equal'', thus outlawing racial segregation in the state school system.

1968 - In France, after many days of rioting, students and workers on strike marched in protest over conditions in schools and universities in Paris and many other cities.

1973 - In the United States, the Senate Committee under Senator Sam Ervin investigating the Watergate affair began its proceedings.

1974 - 32 people were killed and hundreds injured when three car bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin.

1987 - An Iraqi F-I Mirage fighter fired two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark while it was on patrol in the Gulf, killing 37 sailors and wounding 62 others.

1988 - Algeria and Morocco decided to restore diplomatic relations after 12 years of bitter political disputes.

1994 - Kamuzu Banda, one of Africa's longest-serving leaders who ruled Malawi with an iron fist for 30 years, was toppled from power in the country's first multi-party elections.

1997 - Laurent Kabila said he had taken power as head of state in Zaire. His forces took control of the capital Kinshasa. Kabila also renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2000 - Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader at the centre of a UN hostage crisis in Sierra Leone, was captured in the capital Freetown.

2001 - A Russian-built Yak-40 plane carrying 30 people including Iran's Transport Minister Rahman Dadman and other deputy ministers crashed in northern Iran killing all on board.

2002 - Germany's parliament passed legislation allowing around 50,000 gay men prosecuted by the Nazis because of their sexuality to be pardoned, even posthumously.

2003 - The US army posted an additional 9,000 soldiers to Baghdad to combat the crime-wave that has swept the capital since its fall on April 9.

2004 - Massachusetts became the first US state to allow same-sex marriage.

2005 - Romania's parliament approved the European Union accession treaty allowing the Balkan state to join the EU in 2007.

2005 - A ferry with about 200 people on board sank in the Jamuna river in Bangladesh. Only 50 survived.

**2006 - Romano Prodi was sworn in as Italy's new prime minister amid political tensions in a country split in two by the closest elections since 1945.

**2006 - Scientists announced they had reached a landmark point in one of the most important scientific projects by sequencing the last chromosome in the Human Genome, the so-called ''book of life.'' **2006 - Veteran Broadway producer and composer Cy Feuer, who produced the classic musical ''Guys and Dolls,'' died aged 95.

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