Reuters historical calendar - December 1
Nov 24 (Reuters) - Following are some of the major events to have occurred on Dec. 1 since 1900:
1906 - The Cinema Omnia Pathe, the world's first purpose-built movie theatre, opened in Paris.
1925 - The Locarno Treaties, guaranteeing peace and frontiers in Europe, were signed by France, Belgium and Germany and their terms were guaranteed by Britain and Italy.
1934 - Sergei Kirov, Communist Party leader and associate of Josef Stalin, was murdered in Leningrad.
1959 - Twelve nations signed the Antarctic Treaty preserving the area for peaceful purposes and scientific research.
1973 - David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, died. He was in office from 1948-53 and again from 1955-63.
1988 - Benazir Bhutto became the first woman elected to govern a Muslim nation when Pakistan's acting president Ghulam Ishaq Khan named her prime minister.
1989 - Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope, 72 years after the atheist Bolsheviks took power in Moscow.
1991 - Ukrainians voted in a referendum by a nine-to-one margin in favour of independence from Moscow, confirming an earlier parliamentary vote.
1995 - Former Barings Bank trader Nick Leeson pleaded guilty in a Singapore court to two fraud charges linked to some $1.4 billion in losses that broke the bank.
1997 - Stephane Grappelli, French jazz violinist, died aged 89.
1998 - Exxon Corp agreed to acquire Mobil Corp for $76.6 billion, creating the world's biggest oil company.
2000 - Mexican President Vicente Fox took office, ending the oldest surviving single-party system in modern history.
2003 - World AIDS Day brought the launch of a $5.5 billion World Health Organisation plan to rush life-saving anti-retroviral medicine to 3 million of the world's poor, many of them in Africa.
2005 - South Africa's top court said it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry, putting it on track to become the first African country to legalise same-sex marriage. Parliament passed a bill legalising gay marriage in Nov. 2006.
REUTERS
