Reuters Historical Calendar - January 2

1955 - Panamanian President Jose Antonio Remon was machine-gunned while attending the Franco Race track in Panama City.

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on January 2 since 1900:

1915 - Russian forces heavily defeated the Turks under Ahmet Pasha in the five-day battle of Sarikamis. The Turks lost 77,000 of their 95,000 men.

1955 - Panamanian President Jose Antonio Remon was machine-gunned while attending the Franco Race track in Panama City.

1959 - The first lunar space shot, the unmanned Luna I, was launched by the Soviet Union. It passed within 4,600 miles of the moon before moving on to a solar orbit.

1971 - A crowd barrier collapsed at Ibrox Park soccer ground in Glasgow, Scotland, at the end of the Rangers v Celtic match, and 66 people were killed.

1995 - The most distant galaxy yet discovered was found by scientists using the Keck telescope in Hawaii. It was estimated to be 15 billion light years away and was named 8C 1435+63.

1995 - Former Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre died in exile. He had seized power in a 1969 coup and was toppled in January 1991 by forces loyal to faction leader Mohamed Farah Aideed.

2001 - The first Taiwanese boats in more than 50 years to make legal, direct trips to the Chinese mainland, docked in the southeastern province of Fujian.

2002 - Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person indicted in the September 11 attacks on America, appeared in a U.S. court entering a plea of not guilty on charges of conspiring with Osama bin Laden and others to murder thousands of people.

2004 - The U.S. Stardust spacecraft downloaded images and collected samples of space dust after surviving a ride inside the tail of the unique Wild 2 comet about 390 million km (240 million miles) from Earth.

2007 - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon started his first day in office by departing from the traditional U.N. opposition to the death penalty, saying nations could make their own decision.

**2008 - Thailand's Princess Galyani Vadhana, elder sister of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died.