Reuters historical calendar - June 12

London, June 11 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 12 since 1900: 1917 - King Constantine of Greece stepped down in favour of his son, Prince Alexander.

1935 - Bolivia and Paraguay signed a truce ending the Chaco War, a three-year dispute over the Chaco area.

1944 - Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong announced that he would support Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the war against Japan.

1957 - US band leader and saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey died.

1964 - Nelson Mandela was convicted of anti-government sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa.

1976 - President Juan Maria Bordaberry of Uruguay was overthrown by the armed forces and replaced by Alberto Demichelli.

1987 - The Central African Republic's former emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, was sentenced to death for crimes committed during his 13-year rule.

1990 - The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.

1991 - Boris Yeltsin defeated Communist rivals in the first direct election to the presidency of the Russian republic.

1999 - Russian troops entered Kosovo and occupied part of the airport in Pristina; NATO troops entered Kosovo later in the morning.

2000 - Russia unveiled its scheme for governing Chechnya, naming the rebel region's chief Muslim cleric as its first pro-Moscow ethnic Chechen leader in four years.

2001 - Macedonia ended a two-year recognition of Taiwan and switched diplomatic allegiance back to China.

2002 - Serb leaders formally ended a boycott of Kosovo's fledgling government and took an oath of office alongside their ethnic Albanian colleagues.

2003 - Gregory Peck, one of the last great stars from Hollywood's golden era and a man who embodied on-screen heroism and dignity, died. He was 87. Best known for his appearances in the films ''To Kill a Mockingbird'', ''Moby Dick'' and ''Cape Fear''.

2005 - Kuwait appointed its first woman cabinet member, naming veteran women's rights activist Massouma al-Mubarak as planning minister.

**2006 - Avant-garde Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, best known among music lovers for pieces like his polyphonic anti-totalitarian opera ''Le Grand Macabre,'' died aged 73.

**2006 - Canadian newspaper tycoon Ken Thomson, who helped transform his father's print empire into one of the world's biggest electronic publishers, Thomson Corporation, died aged 82.

**2006 - The US Supreme Court ruled that death row inmates could challenge the lethal injection method of execution and could get new hearings when DNA or other evidence later cast doubt on their guilt.

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