Reuters historical calendar - July 24

July 17 (Reuters) - Following are some of the major events to have occurred on July 24 since 1900:

1923 - The Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Turkey and the allied powers. Turkey gave up all claims to non-Turkish territories lost in World War One.

1943 - In World War Two, "Operation Gomorrah", the concentrated bombing of the German city of Hamburg by the Allies, began.

1967 - French President Charles de Gaulle, visiting the French-speaking Canadian city of Montreal, made a speech that ended "Vive le Quebec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!); he was promptly rebuked by Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson and forced to cut short his visit.

1974 - Sir James Chadwick, the English physicist who discovered the neutron and later worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb, died.

1974 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to surrender 64 White House tape recordings to the Washington District Court conducting the Watergate proceedings.

1980 - The British actor and comedian Peter Sellers died. He was noted for his roles in the films "Dr Strangelove" and "The Pink Panther".

1990 - U.S. warships in the Gulf were placed on alert after Iraq massed nearly 30,000 troops near its border with Kuwait.

1993 - Russia's central bank announced a drastic reform of its monetary system, saying all banknotes issued up to the end of 1992 would be withdrawn from circulation.

1996 - In Sri Lanka, 57 people were killed and more than 500 injured when a bomb ripped through a packed commuter train in a suburb of Colombo. The government blamed the Tamil Tiger rebels, although they denied responsibility.

1998 - Tazio Secchiaroli, one of the world's most famous photographers and the "paparazzo" who inspired Federico Fellini's film "La Dolce Vita", died aged 73.

2000 - The American violinist, conductor and teacher Oscar Shumsky died. He was the last surviving pupil of the legendary Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer, who trained some of the greats of the 20th century at the St Petersburg Conservatoire.

2000 - IBM launched the ASCI White computer, a commercial version of what it said was the world's most powerful supercomputer, 30,000 times faster than the average PC.

2001 - Bulgaria's parliament approved the former King Simeon II as the new prime minister. Simeon Saxe-Coburg is the only ex-monarch to regain power in post-communist Europe.

2005 - Richard Doll, the British scientist whose research first established the link between smoking and lung cancer, died aged 92.

2006 - Global free trade talks at Geneva, billed as a once-in-a-generation chance to boost growth and ease poverty, collapsed after nearly five years of haggling.

2007 - Six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV were freed after a partnership deal between Tripoli and the European Union ended their eight-year ordeal.

REUTERS