Reuters historical calendar - June 16

London, June 15 (Reuters) Following are some major events to have taken place on June 16 since 1900: 1904 - The entire action of the novel ''Ulysses'' by James Joyce takes place on this day. It is celebrated internationally as ''Bloomsday'' after the main character, Leopold Bloom.

1940 - Marshal Philippe Petain was asked to form a new government in Vichy France -- the German-controlled but unoccupied area of France after the Nazi invasion.

1941 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the closure of all German consulates in the United States.

1948 - The first airplane hijacking took place when Chinese bandits tried to take over a flight from Macao to Hong Kong. The plane crashed and the bandits' leader was the sole survivor.

1952 - A Swedish rescue plane searching for a lost aircraft was shot down by Soviet fighters over Swedish waters.

1958 - Imre Nagy, Hungarian prime minister during the failed 1956 uprising against Soviet-backed communist rule, was hanged for treason. He was reburied in Budapest on the same day in 1989, when 250,000 people took to the streets for the funeral.

1961 - The ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev requested asylum in France while touring with the Soviet Kirov ballet.

1963 - Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she took off in the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 6.

1972 - Ulrike Meinhof, co-founder of the West German Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla group, was captured in Hanover.

1977 - The Supreme Soviet elected Leonid Brezhnev to the post of Soviet head of state, to replace Nikolai Podgorny.

1979 - General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, military ruler of Ghana from 1972-78, was executed for corruption.

1983 - Yuri Andropov was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet head of state.

1983 - The first successful commercial space launch took place as the European-built Ariane 5 lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana.

1999 - In South Africa, Thabo Mbeki was sworn in as president in succession to Nelson Mandela.

2000 - Japan's Dowager Empress Nagako, the widow of Emperor Hirohito, died.

2001 - A left-wing alliance ousted Berlin's conservative mayor, paving the way for ex-communists to enter city government for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

2001 - Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa was officially handed back to the city after 11 years of work to prevent it toppling over.

2004 - The commission of inquiry into the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, said it had found no evidence that Iraq had aided al Qaeda.

2004 - Former Thai prime minister Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn died aged 93.

2005 - The United States for the first time said it wanted the U.N. Security Council expanded by two ''or so'' permanent members and two or three non-permanent ones.

2006 - Nepal's government agreed to dissolve parliament and set up an interim administration including Maoist rebels.

2006 - Taiwan opened the 13-km (8-mile) Hsuehshan Tunnel, the longest road tunnel in Asia, to link the northern part of the island to the south.

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