Reuters historical calendar - June 22

LONDON, June 21 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 22 since 1900: 1921 - James Craig became the first prime minister of Northern Ireland. He served until November 1940.

1940 - France's General Charles Huntziger signed the terms of surrender with Germany at Compiegne in World War Two, in the same railway carriage in which General Foch had received the German surrender in 1918.

1941 - Operation Barbarossa began when over 150 German army divisions invaded Russia across an 1,800-mile (2,900-km) front between the Baltic and the Black Sea.

1969 - The American film actress and singer Judy Garland died; she is famed for her roles in ''The Wizard of Oz'', ''Meet Me in St Louis'' and ''A Star is Born''.

1974 - The French composer Darius Milhaud died. He is known for the wide variety of styles in which he composed, such as the jazz themes used in his ballet ''La Creation du Monde''.

1981 - Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was dismissed by revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

1987 - The American actor, dancer and singer Fred Astaire died.

He starred in many stage musicals and films, 10 of them with his dancing partner Ginger Rogers.

2000 - At least 130 people were killed in China when the ferry Rong Jian capsized on the Yangtze River near the city of Luzhou.

2001 - Turkey's Constitutional Court banned the main opposition Islamist Virtue Party for anti-secular activity.

2001 - The Egyptian film star Soad Hosni died aged 57. Hosni made 83 films during a career that started in the early 1960s.

2003 - Atal Behari Vajpayee began the first visit to China by an Indian prime minister in a decade.

2004 - Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic acknowledged for the first time on behalf of his community that Serbs committed atrocities against Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

2005 - An Italian judge sentenced 10 former Nazi SS officers in absentia to life in prison for their role in the murder of 560 Tuscan villagers in Sant'Anna di Stazzema, one of Italy's worst civilian massacres of World War Two.

**2006 - Pluto's two newly discovered moons got official astronomical names of Nix and Hydra.

REUTERS LPB PM1132