Reuters historical calendar - March 8
March 1 (Reuters) - Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 8 since 1900:
1917 - Riots and strikes in St. Petersburg marked the start of the "February Revolution" that overthrew the Tsar in Russia.
1921 - French troops occupied Duesseldorf and towns in the Ruhr area following Germany's failure to pay reparations from World War One.
1921 - Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato was assassinated by anarchists near his home in Madrid.
1950 - The Soviet Union said it was in possession of the atomic bomb.
1958 - The Chinese government imposed martial law on the restive Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
1963 - A group of officers led by Colonel Ziad Hariri overthrew the Syrian government and established a National Council of Revolution.
1973 - IRA car bombs exploded outside the Old Bailey courthouse and Scotland Yard police headquarters in London, killing one and injuring 238.
1983 - The British composer William Walton died. The orchestral piece "Facade" is one of his most popular works.
1994 - Sixty-four people were killed and 370 injured when a train packed with mainly black commuters was derailed near Durban, South Africa.
1999 - The New York Yankees baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, briefly married to Marilyn Monroe, died aged 84.
2000 - China executed former vice provincial governor Hu Changqing for bribery, the most senior official to be executed in 50 years.
2001 - A Chilean appeals court ruled 2-1 that former dictator Augusto Pinochet could be tried for human rights abuses that occurred after his 1973 coup.
2001 - Dame Ninette de Valois, the former ballerina who founded Britain's Royal Ballet School and launched the dancer Margot Fonteyn on the road to stardom, died aged 102.
2002 - Israeli forces killed 38 Palestinians in raids after an attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza in which five students were killed.
2004 - The actor and storyteller Spalding Gray, best known for writing and starring in the autobiographical film monologue "Swimming to Cambodia", was confirmed dead after having gone missing for nearly two months.
2005 - The Chechen rebel leader and former elected president Aslan Maskhadov was killed by Russian troops fighting to quell a long rebellion in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region.
2006 - The European Union agreed to end a 10-year ban on British beef that was imposed on Britain at the height of the 1990s mad cow disease crisis.
2007 - The Greek Cypriot government dismantled a key concrete barrier that divided the island's capital Nicosia for decades, calling on Turkey to respond by withdrawing its troops from the area.
2007 - British actor John Inman, best known for his role as camp shop assistant Mr Humphries in the long-running BBC comedy "Are You Being Served?" died aged 71.
2007 - Cruz Hernandez, a Salvadoran woman believed to be 128 years old and possibly the world's oldest person, died.
2009 - Country music star Hank Locklin, who helped pioneer the idea of the concept album and whose songs were popular from Ireland to Japan, died aged 91.
REUTERS
