1935 -- King George II returned to Greece after 12 years of exile, restored to his throne by a referendum.

1941 -- The British battleship Barham was sunk by a German U-boat off Sollum, Egypt, with the loss of 848 lives.

1952 -- Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opened in London. Still playing to audiences today, it holds the record for the longest continuous run of any show in the world.

1963 -- U.S. president John F. Kennedy was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, three days after his assassination.

1965 -- British concert pianist Dame Myra Hess died. She became known for her lunchtime recitals at the National Gallery in wartime London.

1969 -- The Beatle John Lennon returned his MBE award, given by the Queen in 1965, as a protest against Britain's policy in Biafra and its support for the United States in Vietnam.

1970 -- The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima committed public ritual suicide in Tokyo as a protest against the Westernization of Japan and the weakness of its post-World War II constitution.

1973 -- The Greek military dictator George Papadopoulos was overthrown by rival officers in a bloodless coup.

1974 -- The Irish Republican Army was outlawed in Britain following the deaths of 21 people in a Birmingham pub bombing.

1974 -- The Burmese diplomat U Thant died. He became U.N. secretary-general after the death of Dag Hammarskjold in 1961 and held the post until 1971.

1992 -- The Czech Parliament voted to split the country into separate Czech and Slovak republics from January 1,1993.

1993 -- Anthony Burgess, author of the grim futuristic fantasy ***A Clockwork Orange*** and one of Britain's leading contemporary writers, died.

1997 -- Malawi's former leader, Kamuzu Banda, died aged 99. As Hastings Banda, he became president in 1966 and proclaimed himself ruler for life in 1971, crushing all dissent. He was defeated in 1994 in Malawi's first democratic election.

1998 -- Britain's highest court ruled that the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet could be extradited to Spain to face charges of murder and genocide.

1999 -- Only 22 survived when the Dashun ferry, with 302 aboard, broke up in stormy waters off the port city of Yantai on the Shandong peninsula on the east coast of China.

2001 -- Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Massachusetts became the first organization to report the successful cloning of a human embryo. The company said it did not intend to create a human being but to use the stem cells to treat disease.

2002 -- Karel Reisz, Czech-born film director died. THOUGHT

Seek knowledge so that it may provide you with a descent means of living.

[Imam Ali (AS)]