Reuters historical calendar - May 11

LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 11 since 1900: 1931 - The failure of Credit-Anstalt, Austria's largest bank, marked the start of Central Europe's financial collapse.

1943 - US amphibious forces landed on Attu in the Aleutians, the first American territory to be recaptured from the Japanese.

1949 - Siam changed its name to Thailand.

1949 - Israel admitted to the United Nations.

1968 - The French government bowed to student demands and announced concessions in an effort to end over a week of street fighting in Paris.

1981 - Bob Marley, Jamaican-born singer who with his group The Wailers popularised reggae, died of cancer.

1985 - Fifty-six people died and more than 200 were injured when fire engulfed the main stand at Bradford City football ground in northern England.

1987 - The Indian government imposed direct rule on Punjab because of the terror campaign being waged by Sikh extremists.

1988 - Harold ''Kim'' Philby, British intelligence officer and journalist, died. He was the ''third man'' who enabled fellow Soviet spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to escape to Russia in 1951.

1994 - Deir Al-Balah became the first Gaza town to come under Palestinian self-rule.

1996 - A ValuJet Airlines DC-9 crashed in the swampy Everglades near Miami International Airport, killing 110.

1996 - Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria's first president, died. President from 1963, he helped to end the Biafran civil war.

1997 - Garry Kasparov was defeated at chess by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue -- the first time a machine had triumphed over a reigning world champion.

1998 - The first euro coin to be minted came off the presses in France.

1998 - India conducted three underground nuclear tests.

2000 - India welcomed its billionth citizen when a baby girl was born at Delhi's state-run Safdarjang Hospital.

2002 - A UN summit on children concluded with the adoption of a final document marked by a conservative US stamp on matters of adolescent sexuality but with representatives from 180 countries agreeing on 21 new goals in health and education.

2002 - Joe ''Joe Bananas'' Bonanno, a founding member of the American Mafia who was never indicted during the decades he headed one of the ''five families'' of organized crime, died. He was 97.

2003 - Noel Redding, bass player, died. Redding along with drummer Mitch Mitchell, backed Jimi Hendrix on the 1967 debut album ''Are You Experienced'', an instant classic which introduced Hendrix as a singer, composer and above all virtuoso of the electric guitar.

2006 - Indian Ocean islanders expelled by Britain to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia won the right to go home after almost 40 years in exile.

2006 - Former world heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson, who became the youngest boxer to gain the title when he knocked out Archie Moore in 1956 at the age of 21, died aged 71.

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