TODAY IN HISTORY - June 18

Reuters

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 18:

1928 - The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was lost in flight over the Arctic Ocean.

1953 - Egypt was proclaimed a republic with General Neguib as its first president.

1983 - Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space, aboard the shuttle Challenger.

1997 - Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan resigned, bringing to a close a tempestuous one-year tenure as the modern republic's first Islamist leader.

1999 - The Group of Seven leading industrial countries agreed at a summit in Cologne on an initiative to forgive $70 billion in debts owed by poor countries.

2002 - In Israel, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus during morning rush hour, killing 19 people and wounding more than 50.

2003 - Finnish Prime Minister Anneli Jaatteenmaki resigned after using leaked secret state information on Iraq during the March 2003 parliamentary election.

2003 - Italian parliament votes on law to give Premier Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while he remains in office.

2006 - The U.S. Episcopal Church chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its first woman leader, a move unprecedented in the Anglican church.

2010 - Portuguese Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago died.

2011 - World's first transatlantic flight using biofuel.