Reuters historical calendar - June 9

London, June 8 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 9 since 1900: 1908 - Britain's King Edward VII met Russia's Tsar Nicholas II on the royal yacht anchored in the Baltic -- the first meeting between a tsar and a British monarch.

1928 - Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm became the first men to fly across the Pacific when they ended their flight from California to Brisbane.

1931 - The Davis submarine escape apparatus, a hand-held oxygen container and mouthpiece, was used for the first time.

The British submarine Poseidon had sunk off China and the device enabled six men to surface.

1940 - The king and prime minister of Norway ordered their troops to stop fighting at midnight, surrendering to the Nazis.

1958 - Robert Donat, British actor and Oscar winner for his part in the film ''Goodbye Mr Chips'', died.

1959 - The first submarine with Polaris missiles, the USS George Washington, was launched by the United States.

1964 - Lord Beaverbrook, Canadian-born media magnate, died.

1975 - The first live broadcast from the British House of Commons took place.

1976 - Dame Sybil Thorndike, British stage and screen actress, died.

1991 - Mount Pinatubo, a Philippines volcano that had been dormant for 600 years, erupted, causing the evacuation of US troops from their air base.

1992 - More than 700 suspected Mafiosi were arrested in a crackdown in southern Italy.

1995 - Japan's parliament passed a controversial resolution designed to atone for the country's role in World War Two.

1999 - After lengthy talks in Macedonia, NATO and Yugoslavia signed an accord for the swift withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.

2000 - The US Justice Department said it had uncovered no reliable evidence of a conspiracy behind the 1968 assassination of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

2001 - Italian centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi accepted a mandate to form the country's 59th government since the Second World War.

2003 - Pope John Paul completed his 100th trip abroad wrapping up a five-day trip to Croatia.

2004 - Former Nobel peace prize nominee Leyla Zana of Turkey and three other Kurdish ex-lawmakers were freed after serving 10 years in jail for links to Kurdish rebels.

2005 - Bolivia's Congress swore in Supreme Court President Eduardo Rodriguez to replace Carlos Mesa as the country's new president, a move designed to end weeks of crippling protests by the country's indigenous majority and open the way for early elections.

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