Reuters historical calendar - August 1

LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 1 since 1900.

1914 - Germany declared war on Russia and shots were fired between French and German border patrols. Italy declared its neutrality.

1936 - Adolf Hitler opened the 11th Olympic Games in Berlin.

1939 - Glenn Miller, American band leader, recorded ''In the Mood'' which later became his theme tune.

1944 - The 63-day Warsaw uprising began when Poles rose up against Nazi occupation.

1960 - Benin (formerly Dahomey) proclaimed its independence.

1962 - Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah escaped an assassination attempt when a hand grenade was thrown into a welcoming crowd.

1963 - Talks in London on Malta's future ended with some Maltese delegates staging a walkout and Britain announcing that the island would gain its independence in May 1964.

1966 - Yakubu Gowon assumed power in Nigeria following an army coup.

1973 - Walter Ulbricht, leader of the German Communist Party, died. He helped establish a socialist state in the Soviet-occupied half of the country after World War Two and became East German leader in 1960.

1975 - The Final Act of the Helsinki Agreement on human rights was signed by the West and the Soviet Union.

1990 - A five-day coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago ended with the surrender of the Black Moslem rebels and the release of their captives.

1997 - US President Bill Clinton ended a 20-year ban on the sale of high-tech US warplanes and advanced weapons to Latin America.

1997 - Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter died of a heart attack in a Moscow hospital. He was 82.

1999 - The European Union lifted an export ban on British beef imposed in 1996 at the height of the mad cow disease scandal.

2000 - Guerrillas in Kashmir carried out seven massacres, killing at least 90 people and injuring dozens, most of them Hindu pilgrims and labourers.

2001 - Tony Blair began the first visit to Argentina by a British prime minister since the 1982 Falklands War and said it was time to recognise that ''the past is the past''.

2003 - A Russian military hospital in North Ossetia near Chechnya was destroyed after a suicide attacker aboard a truck bomb killed 50 people.

2004 - WTO states seal a deal aimed at slashing rich nations' farm subsidies, opening industrial markets and putting the Doha Round of free trade talks back on track.

2004 - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder became the first German leader to attend Poland's annual commemorations of the failed 1944 Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation.

2004 - A fire sweeps through the a supermarket in Asuncion, killing at least 361 people.

2005 - Saudi Arabia's King Fahd dies. Crown Prince Abdullah is pronounced monarch in a smooth succession.

2005 - President George W Bush bypasses the Senate and appoints John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations over protests of Senate Democrats who complained he was abusive.

2006 - Actor Mel Gibson apologises for making anti-Semitic remarks in a drunken rant and asks to meet Jewish leaders.

2006 - Burundi arrests eight former high-rankig officials and opposition leaders over a suspected coup plot.

Reuters RJ GC1149