Reuters historical calendar - November 1

London, Oct 31 (Reuters) Following are some of the major events to have occurred on November 1 since 1900: 1914 - Five German cruisers sank the British ships Good Hope and Monmouth at the Battle of Coronel off Chile during World War One, with the loss of 1,600 lives.

1936 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed the Rome-Berlin Axis after a visit to Berlin by Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.

1950 - Two members of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement tried unsuccessfully to assassinate US President Harry Truman.

1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were killed in a military coup.

1972 - The American poet and critic Ezra Pound died in Venice.

1985 - Phil Silvers, the American comic actor noted for playing the comic character Sergeant Bilko, died.

1995 - South Africans voted in their first all-race local government elections.

1996 - Former Sri Lankan president Junius Jayewardene died aged 90.

2000 - A much-reduced Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was admitted to the United Nations, eight years after the old Yugoslav federation was expelled following its break-up.

2002 - Israel's first air commander, Yisrael Amir, died.

2004 - The industrialist Lord Hanson, who built the industrial group Hanson Plc into one of the Britain's most powerful companies, died aged 82.

2005 - The UN General Assembly established Jan. 27 as an annual commemoration day for the 6 million Jews and countless other victims murdered in the Nazi Holocaust during World War Two.

2006 - Buddy Killen, who built the biggest country music publishing business in the world before selling it in 1989, died aged 73.

2006 - William Styron, whose 1979 novel ''Sophie's Choice'' was made into an acclaimed film and who won a Pulitzer Prize for ''The Confessions of Nat Turner'', died aged 81.

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