Reuters historical calendar - April 21

April 14 (Reuters) - Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 21 since 1900:

1910 - American novelist Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) died. His masterpieces "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" were drawn from his boyhood experiences.

1918 - Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Germany's top aviator in World War One, was killed in action. Known as "The Red Baron", he shot down 80 enemy aircraft.

1960 - Brasilia became Brazil's new capital.

1967 - A military coup in Athens established the regime of the "Greek Colonels".

1971 - Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, president of Haiti since 1957, died. He ran the country as a dictatorship and created a gangster militia known as the Tontons Macoutes.

1975 - South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned as Viet Cong forces closed on his capital, Saigon.

1985 - Brazilian president-elect Tancredo Neves died on the eve of his swearing-in.

1989 - Tens of thousands of students and workers poured into Beijing's Tiananmen Square in defiance of official warnings against anti-government protests.

1990 - Erte (Romain de Tirtoff), the prolific Russian-born Art Deco designer, died. He created the 1920s theatre sets for the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and the Folies Bergeres in Paris.

1993 - Bolivia's Supreme Court sentenced former dictator General Luis Garcia Meza to 30 years in jail for crimes ranging from mass murder and torture to wholesale fraud against the state.

1999 - NATO warplanes blasted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's party headquarters in Belgrade.

2002 - Thousands took to the streets to protest against the shock success of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election.

2003 - The American singer Nina Simone died aged 70. Her smoky tones gave voice to the American civil rights movement and her repertoire ranged from gospel to George Gershwin.

2004 - Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was freed after 18 years in an Israeli jail, saying he was proud to have revealed secrets exposing the Jewish state as an atomic power.

2005 - Zhang Chunqiao, a member of China's 'Gang of Four' led by the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, died aged 88.

2006 - Nepal's King Gyanendra agreed to restore political power to the people, a year after sacking the government.

2008 - Soul singer Al Wilson, who topped the U.S. pop singles chart in 1974 with "Show and Tell," died. He was 68.

REUTERS